Crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli was asked to make a presentation at police headquarters in Pretoria this week on why he believes he should not be suspended from his job, according to his lawyer, Ike Motloung.
Mdluli’s career is on the line after he was arrested and released on bail two weeks ago after being charged in connection with a murder and kidnapping that took place in 1999.
Police spokesperson McIntosh Polela said the decision about whether Mdluli would be suspended would ultimately be made by national police commissioner Bheki Cele. Polela said there was no conflict in Cele deciding Mdluli’s fate. In spite of suggestions to the contrary, the national commissioner had not been the subject of a corruption investigation by Mdluli. ‘Crime intelligence receives information and passes it on,” said Polela. ‘It would not conduct an investigation.”
Mdluli may also be the target of legal action by Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale, who told the Sunday Times that he intended suing the crime-intelligence boss in a bid to identify those behind a controversial report alleging he was involved in a ‘plot” to unseat President Jacob Zuma. Sexwale could not be reached for confirmation this week.
The Mail & Guardian possesses a copy of the leaked report, titled ‘Ground coverage intelligence report: alleged corruption and related activities KwaZulu-Natal”. It appears to have been declassified and signed by Mdluli on November 24 last year. Marked ‘secret”, the report details allegations of a preliminary investigation into a political plot to unseat Zuma and contains unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against Cele. However, Motloung denied that the report was handed in to court or distributed by his client.
‘The allegations of a plot by Tokyo Sexwale and the rest of them were not made by my client or his legal team,” said Motloung. ‘What we did was hand in two documents to the court that were relevant to the case against my client. We made it clear in discussions in court that parts of both documents should not be placed in the public domain.
The portions we wanted withheld were those that made reference to a plot to unseat the current president. Our reason for doing so was that it had nothing to do with the bail application of my client.”
The magistrate had declared that the portions Mdluli wanted withheld from public scrutiny would not be placed on record, said Motloung. ‘The bottom line is that my client never made the allegations, whether his signature is on the report or not. In his line of work he sees many reports and he does not release them to the public.”