Suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
Suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu told the Madlanga commission he had acted within the law when he issued a directive to disband a task team on political killings.
“I wrote the directive, and I take full responsibility for that. I was not influenced by anyone anywhere, not by phone, not by anything,” Mchunu said, adding that he wanted to see a “qualitative difference” within the South African Police Service (SAPS) during his six months in office.
His instruction for the task team’s immediate disbandment “was not like switching off”, he added, telling the commission: “I understood that immediately denotes a process which the national commissioner [Fannie Masemola] needs to respond to.”
While he had acted independently, Mchunu said he also consulted his special adviser.
“As I wrote that directive, I was within the constitution and legislative framework, but I did consult special adviser advocate Vusi Pikoli, who then indicated comfort in terms of the exercise of that responsibility.”
He said he consulted Pikoli on the day he issued the directive, but this followed earlier discussions about the scope of the police minister’s powers.
He said a range of complaints prompted his action.
“The complaints from various complainants varied in content and emphasis, but they shared common themes, namely unmonitored task team operation resulting in grave human rights abuses,” Mchunu said.
There were “unclear reporting lines in terms of who these task teams report to and allegations of overreach, duplication of functions and significant strain on SAPS resources”, he said.
Complaints came from “people who knew one or two things about police and who felt a concern of one kind or another about policing in the country”. They also included human resources (HR) allegations “alleging some internal abuses within police and some within [the political killings task team] and instances of criminality”.
Mchunu testified that Lieutenant General Samson Sihlabane had complained about the task team, which the Deputy Police Minister, Cassel Mathale, resolved on his instruction.
He referred to an internal SAPS report recommending that task teams undergo an impact analysis to assess feasibility. He also said a 2020 SAPS structure “clearly indicates that the murder and robbery did exist as a section”.
He insisted there had long been an intention within SAPS “to build murder and robbery” and he had personally made efforts to “intensify understanding” of the institution.
The minister of police has no operational role within the task team, “and there was no civilian and ministerial control over its function, which resulted in grave abuse of human rights”, Mchunu added.
He said it was irrational to prioritise one category of killings over South Africa’s broader murder crisis.
“I don’t think that it is fair to devote substantial resources to one category of killings in the country, which is politically related killings and not any other killings, when the evidence is that there is an urgent need to focus on all murders.”
He told the commission he had been deeply concerned by high murder levels since taking office, and his administration identified four priority crimes: murders, the proliferation of firearms, drugs, as well as gender-based violence and femicide.
These crimes “dictate to your conscience a need, almost exclusively, to attend to those”, he said, adding that they characterised South Africa’s criminal landscape.
Political killings must be seen within the broader crime context, he said, adding: “And therefore we can’t keep on focusing on just one category, which in my view, is small, compared to the other, as statistics will indicate. A central consideration that informed my approach was the need to strengthen SAPS’ permanent structures rather than continue to rely on a temporal project.”
By late 2024, Mchunu said, it had become “increasingly clear that concentrating significant resources exclusively on politically motivated murders was no longer efficient or justifiable”.
“Relative to the national burden on violent crime, political killings constitute a small proportion, and a broader systemic consideration was required,” he said.
This did not mean there was no need to focus on political killings, but he was “simply making the point that for me the disproportionate spend on political killings while other systematic murders are ignored can never be justified”.
Mchunu told the commission that he had never been accused of corruption before the allegations, first made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, at a media briefing on 6 July.
He said that after becoming police minister in mid-2024, he had undergone an orientation exercise that gave him “some distant understanding” of what the structural challenges within the police service are. The five-month process was “fruitful”, he said, adding that senior police officials had confirmed that the political killing task team was an interim structure.
He said he “felt empowered to” strengthen internal SAPS units such as the murder and robbery unit and questioned the legality of the task team’s ongoing budget, describing it as “irregular”.
Its budget was supposed to run for six months, not six years, he said, and a 2019 work study recommended disbanding the task team.