Not briefed: Police Minister Bheki Cele (left) and police commissioner Khehla Sitole’s testimony at hearings into the July riots suggest monumental crime intelligence failures. (Jaco Marais/ Netwerk24/Gallo Images)
There have been changes to the country’s intelligence and defence ministers after the intelligence and policing failures that took place during the July riots — sparked by the incarceration of former ANC president Jacob Zuma on contempt charges.
The aftermath of the July riots saw President Cyril Ramaphosa removing state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo and defence minister Nosiviwe Maphisa-Nqakula from their jobs and the movement of the intelligence portfolio to the presidency.
However, Police Minister Bheki Cele and South African Police Service (SAPS) national commissioner Khehla Sitole remain in their posts, despite the spectacular failure of the police (and the security sector) in dealing with political killings and in responding to the July riots, in which the ANC’s internal battles spilled over into the streets.
Sitole is fighting a notice of suspension after a high court finding that he had been intransigent in assisting the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) probe into the R45-million the SAPS spent on cell phone “‘grabbers”’ ahead of the ANC conference at Nasrec in 2017.
There is little to indicate that the criminal justice sector now has the capacity — or the will — to deal with any flare-ups of violence sparked by South Africa’s socioeconomic conditions — or with targeted assassinations sparked by the tensions in the governing party during the elective meetings.
Little progress has also been made in solving the wave of killings of ANC councillors-elect and officials that accompanied the 2016 local government elections, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where more than 100 people were murdered in political killings between 2015 and 2016.
Likewise, the failure of SAPS crime intelligence to provide adequate warning of the wave of riots and looting that took place in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng and of the investigative agencies to bring the instigators to book points to a security establishment unable or unwilling to enforce accountability on the politically connected.
The ANC’s conference season will kick off in the new year, with regions and provinces holding their five-yearly elective meetings ahead of the governing party’s national conference, which is scheduled for December.
The process of electing new leaders, which was put on hold due to the local government elections, had been marred by acts of violence in a number of provinces, including KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, North West and Gauteng.
In KwaZulu-Natal, three people were shot dead at a branch general meeting in August in Durban, where an ANC candidate, Siyabonga Mkhize, was gunned down while campaigning in the Cato Crest area.
In September, the City Press reported how ANC Limpopo secretary Soviet Lekganyane was held hostage by party members over its candidate list process.
This happened weeks after the ANC reported that two people were shot and 16 others injured during meetings in Limpopo’s Waterberg region. This compelled the ANC in Waterberg to call off all its activities in the Lephalale sub-region until security was stabilised.
Waterberg regional spokesperson Matome Taueatsoala described the incident as resembling the storyline of a Hollywood movie, saying that they received reports that the attackers followed their victims to the Witpoort Hospital, where nurses and doctors had to run “for dear life”.
In Tshwane ANC councillor Tshepo Motaung was gunned down while on his way home from a Heritage Day event in Mabopane in September.
In June in the Eastern Cape, the party considered boosting security after violent branch meetings to elect councillors led to one member being stabbed to death.
President Cyril Ramaphosa raised concern about violence at ANC meetings, saying that the party should strive to root out the negative tendencies in the movement where “thugs” are rented to disrupt meetings, intimidate and kill members of the ANC.
As the governing party goes to its elective conferences in most regions and provinces and the national congress poised to take place later in the year, the ANC will also have to consider tightening up its security cluster.
The ANC’s own structures have felt the brunt of a weakened security cluster as gangsterism infiltrated the party, resulting in the death of ANC members.
This was as much as said by electoral committee chair and former president Kgalema Motlanthe in a report to the national executive committee this year.
In the lead-up to the local government elections, ANC branch meetings in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga became a battleground with many left injured or dead.
The factional battles will take centre stage in 2022 with some provincial leaders fearing the worst.
In the Eastern Cape, party chair Oscar Mabuyane called for provincial leaders to rally behind the decision of the elective congress “however aggrieved we may be about a decision that has been taken”. He added that provincial leaders must use internal organisational platforms to express dissatisfaction with decisions.
Mabuyane’s own election as chairperson was tainted by violence when factions used chairs as weapons, injuring many delegates.
While Mabuyane felt duty-bound to caution ANC leaders to rally behind conference outcomes, he told the Mail & Guardian that he believed that the Eastern Cape elective conference would run smoothly.
“There is no space for anarchy and anarchism. This will be a normal conference. In the last four years since we assumed office, we have done a lot of political education to confront these foreign tendencies in the ANC in our province,” Mabuyane said.
“The last one degenerated because leadership allowed it to degenerate because of personal interests. This time around no personal interests will undermine the renewal agenda of the ANC. We are carrying huge responsibility on our shoulders to restore and renew the ANC against all odds,” he said.
In Gauteng, the ANC secretary Jacob Khawe believes the weak security structure coupled with potentially volatile ANC conferences is a reason to worry. He said the Gauteng provincial executive committee (PEC) meeting, which took place on Monday, 6 December, reflected on the criminality that has taken hold of some of the party’s structures.
Khawe said some branches have resolved to ask police to secure branch meetings.
“There is a need for the ANC to firstly look at its internal security capacity. For some time now we have not been focused on that because of the fights in the MKMVA [uMkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association]. So we really don’t know who to call for.”
He said the PEC reflected on the police’s own intelligence, which was especially concerning in Tshwane, where gang members were widely known to have infiltrated party structures.
“It’s a sad state of affairs. When you are sitting as an organisation no longer working, you rely on the state but if the system of the state is no longer responding you have no one to rely on.”
He said the PEC was also considering employing private security companies, however, the majority were foreign-owned, adding that they undermined the integrity of the country.
He said the PEC resolved to mandate the MEC for safety and security Faith Mazibuko to give advice on how the ANC in the province can protect itself.
During the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) hearings into the July riots, which were held in Durban in late November and early December, the extent of this policing collapse was made clear during the evidence of Sitole and Cele.
Sitole testified that crime intelligence failed to provide SAPS management with any forewarning of the riots, saying that they only started to do so after the first wave of burning and looting took place.
Sitole testified that a single intelligence report, which contained no relevant information on the modus operandi of the alleged insurrectionists and was drawn from information already in the public domain, was presented to Cele and Ramaphosa during the unrest.
Sitole also testified that he had remained in Pretoria while the unrest was taking place and that he had allowed KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi to go on leave at the height of the looting and arson attacks that paralysed KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng.
Despite this, Sitole said that he was capable of doing his job as national police commissioner.
In his evidence at the commission, Institute for Security Studies researcher David Bruce said that the inability of the state to act in the face of threats of unrest or violence from within the ranks of the ANC was a problem.
“Along with that goes a particular conundrum for security services — or governance of the security services — because one of the aspects of the governance of the security services that is desirable in a country is that their politicisation is minimised.”
Bruce said that the intelligence services would have to have focused their security on “elements within or linked to the governing party” if the riots were to have been prevented.
Bruce said he hoped that the inquiry would make findings on the need for the ANC to ensure that its internal battles did not spill over into the security services and the country as a whole.
“Ultimately, what this points to is a need for us to engage with the governing party about the problematic consequences of its internal dynamics and politics for the country as a whole, but also for the security services,” Bruce said.
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