By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is back in front of the committee on Wednesday, 8 October and taking questions from MPs throughout the morning. It is the second day of his testimony, following an appearance on Tuesday.
Speaking at the start of Wednesday’s session, DA MP Ian Cameron said that “no one” would be recusing themselves at the moment.
This comes after calls for DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard to recuse herself at the Parliament’s ad hoc committee hearings.
The ANC and MK Party made the call on Tuesday after Barnard was named during the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry for interfering with police investigations.
The accusation came from Mkhwanazi. He had alleged that Kohler Barnard appeared to have obtained information about Crime Intelligence that should not have been disseminated.
Cameron said Kohler Bernard would be listening to Wednesday’s meeting virtually in a bid to not disrupt proceedings.
He said he DA will seek a legal opinion around the calls for the recusal of its alternate member, but ad hoc committee chair Soviet Lekganyane said he would not be entertaining the subject.
In contrast to the ongoing Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, MPs had a chance to question Mkhwanazi about his statement and his July media briefing, where he laid out, among others, accusations that a drug cartel based in Gauteng was controlling a high-level criminal syndicate that extended into various state entities, including the police.
Each MP on the committee has 30 minutes to question Mkhwanazi and during question time, and the MK party wasted no time in talking about president Cyril Ramaphosa.
The party challenged the establishment of the Madlanga Commission in court, as well as Ramaphosa’s appointment of Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia. The case was dismissed.
It argued that Ramaphosa failed to meet his constitutional responsibilities by opting not to dismiss Senzo Mchunu outright, instead placing him on special leave with full pay and perks, and appointing Cachalia, who is not a Cabinet member, as acting minister.
David Skosana (MK) asked if Mkhwanazi agreed that Ramaphosa had failed to act on the issues that have surfaced. According to Skosana, this made Ramaphosa complicit by omission and warranted a criminal inquiry.
Skosana also claimed that “classified briefings were photographed” and this was linked to a civilian close to Mchunu.
“Should the commander in chief, being the President, be held personally answerable for failing to safeguard this national intelligence?”
Mkhwanazi responded: “I said this today – you asked me about police management and how to deal with things in the police. I can answer, but you ask about the management of the country. I might have my own opinions, but I’m not in a position to be able to say this, what the President should have done, what he shouldn’t have done.”
He continued: “I have not been exposed to that level of what it takes to run the country, so it’s going to be difficult for me to say [if] it’s the action of the President in [establishing] the Madlanga Commission is right or not, I don’t know.”
Mkhwanazi said that as a disciplined police officer, Ramaphosa “remains my commander”.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema was walking the general through his history in the police, which Mkhwanazi joined in 1993.
When questioning arrived at the late 2000s, Mkhwanazi spoke of a shift in culture within the police.
He explained that politics began to infiltrate police structures during the ANC leadership battle between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
Mbeki fired Zuma as his deputy in 2005, but Zuma won the ANC presidency at the 2007 conference in Polokwane.
Mkhwanazi said those loyal to Zuma lost sight of their responsibilities in the build-up, and then went about cementing their positions in the aftermath.
“But they don’t go there to police the ANC conference, they are going there to erect their own marquee tent on the side with alcohol and everything else to celebrate the victory that was coming,” said Mkhwanazi.
The return of the leadership back to Pretoria changed everything in the police, because we started getting recruitment to join political parties within police premises in Pretoria.
Mkhwanazi also took aim at journalists, stating he had a list of media professionals he said should be sanctioned or even face prison terms for publishing inaccurate information.
“For this to stop, I am going to hope that the lawmakers — yourselves — you are going to put measures in place to make sure that a journalist is not going to hide behind being a journalist if he is reporting things that are wrong.
“There must be heavy penalty of the mistakes done by journalists. It can not be that anyone else is going to be held accountable, but when it comes to media freedom, it is gospel whatever they say,” stated Mkhwanazi.
The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef), however, described his comments as an “extraordinary attack” that it hoped would be condemned.
“This is a chilling attack on the constitutional rights to a free press, “stated Sanef.
Mkhwanazi qualified his distrust of some journalists by saying there were good media professionals, just as there were many good police officers.
Ian Cameron of the DA asked him about issues that included misinformation.
This was apparently in relation to previous assertions from Mkhwanazi that certain high-level officers in Crime Intelligence and the police service’s vetting department were directing damaging misinformation to, among others, journalists.
Mkhwanazi, responding to Cameron, referred to a query he once received from a City Press journalist, Abram Mashego, who Mkhwanazi alleged was: “The one who is being handled by Crime Intelligence, amongst others.”
Mashego had asked for Mkhwanazi’s response to legal action that Deputy National Commissioner of Crime Detection Shadrack Sibiya was apparently instituting against him.
This was after 6 July 2025, the day Mkhwanazi held a press conference and made several high-level accusations, including that Sibiya played a role in trying to disband KwaZulu-Natal’s political killings task team.
Mkhwanazi said it appeared that Mashego had been fed details about potential legal action Sibiya was instituting.
But Mkhwanazi had not yet seen any such court papers.
He said he replied to Mashego, saying, in part: “I hope you are not one of those captured.”
Mkhwanazi said he deliberately used those words because he was of the view that Mashego was a captured journalist.
He also made his feelings about some politicians very clear, referring to Barnard and National Coloured Congress leader Fadiel Adams, for their alleged handling of leaked sensitive information.
He said: “They should go to [Cape Town’s] Pollsmoor [prison] and sit there for a while so that they can learn something.”
Mkhwanazi also told the ad hoc committee that the unrest could have been prevented if social media had been shut down.
The police commissioner recommended that a state of emergency be declared so that specific communication towers could be temporarily shut down in KZN to halt the instigation and planning of violence and looting via social media.
“When such things happen, and the community mobilises themselves for insurrection, a coup or whatever you call it, you want to bring that particular area… under control. And the only way in this day and age to do that, is to get rid of social media.
“When the [July 2021 riots started] I said, shut down communications – declare a state of emergency.”
“I wanted Twitter and WhatsApp group chats to be shut – not in the entire province, but [where incitement and planning was taking place].”
He said he had also suggested that trucks be barred from driving at night during the early days of the unrest. This was when dozens of freight carriers started blocking roads on the M7, N2 and N3 to protest the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma on contempt of court charges. Trucks were torched at Mooi River – an area notorious for ongoing violent protests by local drivers over the hiring of cheaper and sometimes undocumented foreign nationals.
Mkhwanazi was referring to tweets posted by Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, who had openly celebrated the destruction via the micro-blogging site. Throughout the unrest, Zuma-Sambudla had tweeted photos of the unrest, often saying “Amandla, we see you” – and in some instances, footage from older protests attached.
This stirred a volatile pot, according to Mkhwanazi.
The 2021 unrest started with sporadic incidents of violence on the first night of Zuma’s imprisonment – July 8 – two days later, it morphed into something never experienced in democratic South Africa.
The country’s ministers, security services, and Mkhwanazi have been severely criticised for their handling – or rather fuddled and inadequate handling – of the unrest.
In KwaZulu-Natal, there are about 18,000 SAPS members to service a population of over 11 million. eThekwini, which experienced the brunt of the unrest and related deaths, has a population of about 3,5 million.
Watch Live in the video below:
Video Courtesy of Parliament.