Mkhwanazi has informed the Madlanga commission what led to the breakdown in his relationship with former police minister Bheki Cele.
KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has informed the Madlanga commission what led to the breakdown in his relationship with former police minister Bheki Cele.
On Friday, Mkhwanazi continued with this testimony, where he accused Cele of attempting to interfere with an investigation and subsequent disciplinary hearing against Major General Feroz Khan, who heads the Counter-Intelligence and Security Intelligence division.
On 9 July 2021, Khan was called to a scene in Johannesburg, where senior police officers had allegedly offloaded bags of drugs from a delivery truck onto their police van.
ALSO READ: Mkhwanazi flags MP’s alleged reckless use of classified information
In that incident, police officers from the Booysens station intercepted their colleagues from taking the drugs they had offloaded, and then called Khan to the scene.
Three years later, on 25 October 2024, Khan was subjected to a disciplinary hearing over this matter. Mkhwanazi chaired the proceedings.
Cele’s ‘strange call’to Mkhwanazi
Mkhwanazi said while investigations into Khan were ongoing and before the matter sat for a hearing, Cele called him to say that Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi had approached him to help fight crime in the province.
Cele’s call was mainly to request that Mkhwanazi release district commander Major General Jabu Khumalo to Gauteng.
“I found it strange because I think he called two or three times. When I was in a meeting, I kept giving the phone to one brigadier who was with me in the meeting.
“After that, I had a conversation with General Cele, and then he pleaded with me to release this general to come to Gauteng,” said Mkhwanazi.
ALSO READ: No arrests made on task team dockets despite instructions to do so – Mkhwanazi
“And my surprise was, but when General Cele was in the police, he did not like General Khumalo. He didn’t like him at all. Now that he’s out of the police, why does he trust Khumalo to come and work with him in Gauteng? It was just strange.
“And I turned to my colleague who was with me in the meeting and said, I received a strange call here. General Cele is asking me to approach Khumalo to come and work with him in Gauteng. This means he must resign from the police and go and work in Gauteng with him for five years, then he’ll come back into the police, which was very odd.
“And my colleague was also confused. He said as far as he knew, Cele didn’t like Khumalo, and he made all of us at the head office believe that Khumalo was a bad person. Why would he now suddenly want Khumalo to work with him?”
‘Disappointed’
Mkhwanazi said he proceeded to inform General Khumalo about the call he had just received from Cele.
“General Khumalo just laughed, and he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, the general is not serious about that’. So I asked him, What do you mean? He said, ‘No, he’s not serious. He wants me to back off on the case against Khan, General Khan from Crime Intelligence.”
General Khumalo had at the time been appointed to investigate General Khan’s matter.
ALSO READ: Bombshell at Madlanga commission: Mkhwanazi accuses DA MP of breaking the law
Mkhwanazi said he was disappointed to realise how far politicians are allegedly willing to go to shield their associates from investigations.
“That got me so upset, commissioners, that General Cele went to the extent of wanting a person to resign from the service because he wants to protect someone. It was very strange. I did not talk to General Cele from that day. I was very upset. He disappointed me as a person, who’s a former minister
in the police.”
Khan cleared
He said that from there, media articles were published about him in an attempt to paint him in a bad light. This was done to discredit his impartiality in General Khan’s matter.
“How do I prove that? It’s because General Khan’s lawyers even wrote to me on emails and said, ‘There are these things about you in the media. So we are in doubt about your independence in dealing with Khan’.
“So that’s when I deducted that, oh, the pressure was for me to back off from this member’s case. Why will they go all out to try and get us to back off on the case against General Khan?”
Mkhwanazi later cleared General Khan of any wrongdoing in the disciplinary hearing.
“I could not find a single wrong that General Khan has done. In actual fact, I even said that in my own words, that the Saps owe General Khan for what he did. Because General Khan stopped the police officers who came to collect drugs.
“So if I had that bad intention against Khan, I would have dismissed him. But I did not because I gave him a fair disciplinary hearing, of which you can ask him today, he’ll tell you, no, I treated him fairly.”
READ NEXT: Madlanga commission: Mkhwanazi pulls no punches, says Mchunu involved with criminals
