Marianne Merten
The Western Cape’s top detective and one of the key investigators of the anti-urban terrorism campaign Operation Good Hope, Director Leonard Knipe, is set to head a new unit investigating crimes against the state.
His promotion was finalised last week despite criticism that Knipe has failed to effectively deal with the violence in the Cape.
Currently the acting head of the Western Cape detective service, Knipe will take up an assistant commissioner’s post in Pretoria to be vacated when Superintendent “Suiker” Brits retires at the end of this month.
Although there still seems to be some confusion in police circles about what the new unit will do, it is understood its brief will include investigations into terrorism, sabotage and attacks against state institutions, such as police stations.
The unit was established as part of the restructuring of the detective service, separating its investigative and crime intelligence capacities. It will give a national priority to the conflict in the Western Cape which, many say, has been regarded until now as a provincial policing issue.
Thus Knipe will continue to probe the Cape Flats violence, an assignment that has sparked disapproval from sections of Western Cape civil society and police. For although Knipe is regarded as one of the region’s most experienced investigators, with 33 years in the force, his role as the man in charge of detectives probing the Cape Flats conflict has repeatedly been criticised.
Knipe said he regarded any possible transfer as a personal matter and referred queries to the office of National Commissioner George Fivaz. Fivaz’s representative, Director Joseph Ngobeni, said the commissioner was considering Knipe’s transfer because he had expertise in anti-terrorism investigations.
Knipe’s often controversial track record includes investigating the head of the presidential investigation task team, Andre Lincoln, for fraud and misuse of state property. Knipe is believed to be planning to call the man Lincoln investigated, alleged Mafia kingpin Vito Palazzolo, and Hard Livings gang boss Rashied Staggie to testify in court in June.
Allegations of shielding and fraternising with known criminals have repeatedly been levelled at Knipe following the publication of a picture featuring Knipe and other detectives meeting Hard Livings gang bosses Rashaad and Rashied Staggie at a Waterfront restaurant. The meeting took place before Rashaad Staggie was killed during a People against Gangsterism and Drugs march to his Salt River house in August 1996.
In a lesser-known incident, Knipe has been under investigation in connection with the deaths of ex-murder and robbery detectives Des Segal and Mike Huysamer early in 1997. The two men were killed in a car crash en route to Ceres with a boot full of illegal weapons, such as RPG rocket launchers, AK-47s and ammunition.
Sources said a special task team had investigated Knipe’s role in moving the weapons, believed to be part of an arms cache stored since late-apartheid days. The Ceres Magistrate’s Court found no one could be held responsible for the deaths, but the director of public prosecutions has yet to decide whether to prosecute in connection with the weapons. The police said they could not disclose “if any charges would be brought against any civilian and/or police official” because the matter was still sub judice.
In a new twist in a series of death threats Knipe has received over the years, a former murder and robbery unit detective serving under him was arrested last month on the West Coast for allegedly plotting to kill Knipe. During the raid on Berlin Vos’s Hopefield home, police seized 50kg of commercial explosives and a gun silencer. The man apparently wanted to prevent Knipe from testifying against him in a trial on several charges, including burglary.
In February 1997 Knipe testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about his role as the initial investigator after the shooting of seven young Guguletu activists in 1986. At the time he was a captain in the Peninsula murder and robbery unit.
In June 1997 he testifed again, this time on the wave of killings in the KTC township in the late 1980s.