Mkhwanazi’s explosive testimony reveals political interference and corruption threatening to collapse South Africa’s criminal justice system.
When one of the country’s most senior police officers claims that a minister was influenced, then you know your justice system is in trouble.
On the opening day of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi dropped a bombshell when he warned the “criminal justice system risks total collapse if nothing is done about the corruption and sabotage”.
He didn’t hold back as he fingered top police and government officials in “meddling” with police work.
Mkhwanazi said he originally thought police minister Senzo Mchunu’s “irrational and irregular” letter to disband the KwaZulu-Natal Political Killings Task Team was fake as he wasn’t consulted about it, and the team had achieved success in the Eastern Cape – another political violence hotspot.
He thought Mchunu had received advice to disband the task team. In a press conference on 6 July, Mkhwanazi bravely made explosive claims of a syndicate involving politicians, law enforcement, metro police, correctional services, prosecutors, the judiciary, and drug cartels.
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It led to this commission.
Yesterday, he didn’t hold back, lifting the lid on the “irregular dealings”.
Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, in his opening address, said should the allegations be found to be true, it would be “doom” for South Africa’s criminal justice system.
He said: “At the centre of any functioning constitutional democracy is a well-functioning criminal justice system. If you subvert the criminal justice system, you subvert the rule of law and constitutional democracy.”
Mkhwanazi will testify until the end of the week. Who knows what other bombshells will be dropped?
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