By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
SA Police Services (SAPS) national commissioner Fannie Masemola has issued a directive that 121 case files that were seized will be returned to the KZN Political Killings Task Team.
This comes after KZN comissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, claimed that the dockets that were under investigation were taken away from the political killings task team by the Deputy Police Commissioner for crime detection, Shadrack Sibiya.
The claims led to Sibiya being suspended pending the outcome of the police commission of inquiry by retired Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga.
According to General Mkhwanazi, 121 dockets were taken away from the KZN political killings task team due to interference by Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and Sibiya.
Speaking to the media on the second day of the 27th Interpol African Regional Conference in Cape Town, Masemola said the dockets were traced at the police headquarters in Pretoria.
Masemola said he gave the directive that they must be returned to KZN for investigation.
“The detectives are busy with making copies, and then from there they will be sent back to the provincial commissioner, and he will allocate them back to the political killings task team, and investigations will continue,” Masemola said.
He also said the cases contained in the dockets were complex matters that included murder, attempted murder and intimidation, and he therefore doesn’t expect any arrests to emanate from them just yet.
Masemola also revealed that the ministry will be opening a leg of the political killings task team in Gauteng in the next four weeks to tackle the number of unresolved cases.
“We have a number of unresolved cases in Gauteng that are murders of politicians and also taxi-related [murders] that are quite complex,” he said.
Meanwhile National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Shamila Batohi, who has been head of the authority since 1 February 2019, said she did not believe the NPA was in crisis, but rather that there was a wider crisis when it came to organised crime.
When pushed about suggestions that there had been efforts from within the NPA to sabotage the prosecution of certain crimes, Batohi said there “definitely has been”.
“You know, I mean we’ve come through a period of State Capture, and that’s why I welcome the Madlanga Commission because I think if things like that are still going on, we need to root out the bad apples in our institutions and we need to make sure that, after a fair process, we kick them out.”
“At the moment, there are allegations, and you know we need to ensure that they are properly aired and we know what’s going on, and that we deal with it,” she said.
When asked about the prosecution of State Capture-era crimes, Batohi said: “To win this fight takes a lot of effort, and this is not a fight that can be won in the short term.”
What was required, Batohi said, was an understanding of the decimation of state institutions during the State Capture era — “to rebuild that capacity is not an overnight thing, it’s a journey”.
Batohi, who is due to retire next year, said there had been progress, such as establishing the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) as a fully formed programme, and improving capacity within the NPA.