Disbanding the Political Killings Task Team stalled high-profile murder investigations, exposing political interference.
South Africa is a movie. This is a line that social media commentators use to describe the events that go in this country’s corridors of power.
A line that says most events that happen are so bizarre, so unbelievable that the only way that citizens can even begin to make sense of them is by looking at the events as though they are not real, only make-believe.
That is the kind of bizarre scenario that KwaZulu-Natal top cop Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi spent three days painting at the Madlanga commission.
Yet there are media commentators looking for what they call “hard evidence”.
In any normal democracy, anyone with alleged links to a crime or drug syndicate having direct access to the minister of police is scandalous enough that it would not only have triggered a commission of inquiry, but parliament would have had to convene specifically for that member of the executive to clear his name immediately, failing which he/she would have to fall on their own sword.
This country has been through so much scandal and impropriety that was never acted upon that a minister of police believes they can explain away receiving material benefits from an alleged top criminal.
Anyone looking for “explosive” evidence of political interference has been living under a rock since Covid because when DJ Sumbody was murdered on the streets of Africa’s financial capital, the expectation was that justice would be swift.
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It has been three years and many more brazen AK-47 drive-by shootings later that some sort of breakthrough has been achieved and warrants of arrests issued and effected.
Thirty-six months later, really?
Why?
Mkhwanazi has painted a picture that shows that the members of the police service who achieved the breakthrough were members of the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) which now suspended minister of police Senzo Mchunu shut down on 31 December, 2024.
The dockets that task team was busy with included those on the murder of DJ Sumbody and former Transnet employee Armand Swart, who was gunned down outside his workplace in Vereeniging.
It must be the biggest coincidence that the dockets for these murders allege the two murders were committed by the same criminals. Using the same guns. And the masterminds have access to people in political high office.
One of the most high-profile political assassinations to have happened in this country is that of former ANC Youth League secretary-general and KZN councillor Sindiso Magaqa, who was gunned down for exposing corruption in his municipality.
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Every politician who made an address at his funeral promised his killers would be brought to book.
The Magaqa family had to wait for eight years before a group of accused people appeared in court for his murder.
The link between his murder and those of DJ Sumbody and Armand Swart?
The team that made the breakthrough in the investigation was the PKTT, on the dockets that Mchunu’s decision to disband that task team had confined to oblivion last year.
It takes a special case of lack of understanding or deliberate ignorance to dispute that the decision to disband the PKTT was a political action aimed at derailing police investigations into high-profile murders, the accused of which are connected to top politicians.
Is it not enough that Mkhwanazi said he found out about the imminent disbandment of the PKTT through a person outside the police service when he had sought a meeting with Mchunu?
South Africa is a movie because people reject the reality placed in front of their very eyes.
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