The disbandment of a KwaZulu-Natal-based political killings task team was a surprise, and the handover of 121 dockets it was working on to the South African Police Service head office was “messy” Photo: David Harrison
Cold case murder investigations in South Africa are stymied by political interference, cover-ups by senior police officers, inadequate budgets and junior officers doing work that should be the purview of veteran detectives.
And according to police sources, the country’s once revered national cold case unit no longer has the clout it did four years ago, as it battles with under-resourcing and internal and external meddling.
Prior to the approval of the Cold Case Investigation Unit in 2020-21, task teams were often used to investigate unsolved cases.
The sources said that currently, unless the murder victim was a celebrity or complaints had been received “high up” about a case having stalled, the docket was unlikely to make it to the national unit.
Criminologist Guy Lamb told the Mail & Guardian that given South Africa’s high crime rate, active cases and crime fighting tend to be prioritised over cold cases.
Two prominent dockets worked on by the national unit are the murders of Bafana Bafana captain Senzo Meyiwa and Pastor Liezel de Jager. The head of the national unit, Brigadier Bongani Gininda, was the lead investigator in Meyiwa’s murder.
Appointments at national level were halted in 2022-23 and provinces were given the authority to start their own cold case units. The sources said that very often, this takes place at station level, where investigations could be handled by “kids who have just come out of [police] college”.
The sources said the quality of investigations at station and provincial level would mostly rate “one” on a scale of 10, and “the workload is carried by a few”.
“They don’t know which dockets they are working on, and there is not enough information flow or communication to other units like Crime Intelligence to profile suspects or to identify them. They are just docket carriers,” one police source said.
In many cases, the junior officers “can’t even be trusted to take a statement themselves; you have to get a senior to go with them, which takes the senior away from the field”.
Ian Cameron, the chairperson of parliament’s portfolio committee on police, told the M&G that provincial cold case units were “significantly under-resourced”.
It was the national unit that “gives me hope”, he said. “In my opinion, they are extremely competent.”
Political interference and meddling from seniors within SAPS was another obstacle in solving cold cases at a national level, according to the sources.
“[The politicians ask us] exactly what cases we are working on [and why other cases had not been prioritised],” said one source.
“[Very senior officers] also wanted to know what we were doing. In one case, a suspect got wind of an investigation [from a senior officer who was his friend]. The suspect phoned the unit and said, ‘Here I am, come and get me.’
“But there were also other leaks,” one of the sources said. The unit was at one stage aware that if they took their itineraries to “a certain person in finance”, information would be leaked. “Everyone tried to avoid that person.”
The names of those allegedly implicated in interference are known to the Mail & Guardian. Their comments will be added once they have responded to questions.
The sources said the national unit was severely understaffed, putting the number of detectives at nine or 10.
“In an ideal world, that number should be at least 120,” both agreed.
But according to Lamb: “There is immense political pressure on the police to address the current violence in the country, particularly high-profile cases that get attention in the media.”
Cold cases are addressed when there is political consideration, such as matters arising from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Lamb said. “We do see some activation around that, where there was a lot of political pressure.”
There would also be focus on cold cases when contemporary criminal offending was linked to historical offending, he said, but “the bottom line is that cold cases are not prioritised from a policing point of view or from a budgetary point of view”.
Which cases should be pursued would come down to the preference of provincial commissioners, said Lamb.
Using KwaZulu-Natal as an example, he said the focus of provincial commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi was predominantly on current crime and decreasing violent crime levels.
“Ultimately, that is what police leadership are judged on — current crime.”
SAPS told the M&G that KwaZulu-Natal — considered one of the country’s most violent provinces — does not have a cold case unit.
“All station-level detectives can investigate cold cases,” said spokesperson, Brigadier Athlenda Mathe.
Besides general detective courses, there was also no specialised cold case training in KwaZulu-Natal, she said.
The province has 35 murder cases classified as cold, Mathe added.
But Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard, who sits on parliament’s police committee and is a longtime Durban resident, said it was “hard to believe” that the province had only 35 cold cases.
Some of the police stations in KZN had among the highest murder rates in the country, she said. “So to suggest there are only 35 cold cases is extraordinary. I don’t for one minute believe the number is that low.”
Mathe said Gauteng has one provincial unit, but there is no full-time focus on cold cases, and its budget is shared with other components under the provincial detective budget. The province has 48 murder cases classified as cold, she said.
The Western Cape unit has 21 active cold cases with dedicated full-time detectives. The most prevalent crimes investigated by this unit are gender-based violence, farm murders, political murders, “old murder cases” and high-profile inquests.
In Mpumalanga, there is one unit with four detectives who also handle other cases. No specialised training is received for handling cold cases, and the unit shares the budget of general detectives. The number of cold cases was not provided.
The Northern Cape has a unit, Mathe said, but it is “still being capacitated”. The budget is shared with general detectives. The number of cold cases was not provided.
Limpopo’s cold case unit is based at the police provincial head office in Polokwane, with “experienced detectives” allocated who share the general detectives’ budget, said Mathe. The number of cold cases was not provided.
The Eastern Cape — which was the province with the highest per capita murder rate for July to September 2024, according to crime statistics — has one unit with “experienced detectives” who also handle other cases. There is no cold case training or additional budget for investigations. The number of cold cases was not provided.
Told that some of the officers investigating cold cases at station and provincial level had been described as “seasoned”, one of the police sources said: “Then I don’t know what they mean by seasoned.”
The sources said that besides incompetence, SAPS had stopped offering courses because of budgetary constraints, which seriously hampered the development of junior officers.
One of the sources said that much of the success in South Africa’s cold case investigations was a result of collaboration with private companies and individuals in crime intelligence.
Private cold case investigations
Although Mathe said police did not share evidence with private investigators who were working on behalf of families, including forensic evidence, the sources said: “On paper the request will be denied, but the information will get to the private investigator.”
Mathe said: “The family [using a private investigator] would have to make a formal application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act in order to have access to stored records.”
Cameron said the national unit should work with provincial units, but according to the sources, this was not always the case.
“There have been times when officers from national travel to provinces and provinces can’t even find dockets.”
The sources said that although there were officers at station level who had been identified by the national unit as ripe for recruiting, “we are always told there is no money”.
The sources said that although the national unit can call on the Crime Intelligence division and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate for assistance, the quality of the work done by those units affects its ability to solve cold cases.
As an example, said one of the sources, if Crime Intelligence did not apply for cellphone records when a murder was committed, the information would be lost to the cold case team if the docket was referred in a timeframe of more than three years.
This is because cellphone service providers keep records for only three years, said the source. “That’s when you have to start looking for informers — after three years — and that’s not easy.”
Cameron said there was no specific time that had to pass before a case was considered cold.
“I think it really gets to a point where, if it is a serious matter, the cold case unit would be approached to check if there is something that could have been missed.”
He said that in the case of De Jager, almost two years went by without any solid leads. When the matter was referred to the national cold case unit, it took them a week “to do more work than the original detective had done in two years”. That detective ended up resigning.
In the same case, the national unit and state prosecutor worked “seamlessly”, he said, something that was usually a problem because a silo mentality had been adopted.
“A prosecutor and investigator should sing from the same hymn sheet,” said Cameron.
When asked what the timeframe was for a case to be considered cold, the sources said: “No one can answer what makes a case cold”, but they agreed that high-profile cases tended to be more readily considered cold by political and police elites.