At their core the current inquiries into political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system stem from the SA Police Service (SAPS) and politicians’ sustained refusal to implement the reforms that are required for responsive, accountable and democratic policing to take root in SA.
It’s not as if it’s not known what is needed. From the 1995 Policing White Paper to the 2008 Matthews commission on intelligence, the 2012 National Development Plan (NDP) and the Marikana commission’s expert panel’s report — essentially a two-year, widely consulted policing review — all outlined the required transformation to achieve a publicly trusted and professional SAPS.
Public and institutional accountability, alongside demilitarisation, runs like a golden thread through all of these policy, reform and transformation proposals. Professionalism and depoliticising the SAPS emerge as foundational.
Instead, details of police politicking, corruption and malicious compliance have unfolded before the Madlanga commission and in parliamentary proceedings. The time frame is relatively recent – KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi framed his claims around the 2024 New Year’s Eve decision to disband the political killings task team — and can’t be blamed on state capture.
Political meddling and corruption in the criminal justice system date back to the Thabo Mbeki presidency, from national police commissioner Jackie Selebi (convicted drug trafficker Glenn Agliotti testified against him about their relationship) to spy boss Billy Masetlha, on whose watch the fake email hoax played into ANC politicking.
Lt Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi testifies at the Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee’s inquiry. (Brenton Geach)
Prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli was suspended by Mbeki, seemingly for wanting to prosecute Selebi, and was sacked by then president Kgalema Motlanthe despite an inquiry headed by former parliamentary speaker Frene Ginwala finding Pikoli a fit and proper person. This underscores the persistent pattern of political shielding and politicking across the criminal justice system.
The 2018 high-level review panel report into the State Security Agency (SSA) did not mince its words, outlining “extremely serious politicisation and factionalisation”, adding that this resulted in “almost complete disregard for the constitution, policy, legislation and other prescripts”.
Three years on, the expert panel report into the July 2021 civil unrest found the cabinet overall responsible and said it needed to drive “a national response plan that demonstrates its own willingness to be held accountable” while also holding to account officials who failed in their responsibilities.
Instead, today’s criminal justice sector is characterised by a proliferation of structures that duplicate functions and involve the same parties. The collectivised decision-making of the ministerial security cluster and various interministerial committees leads to governance paralysis. This allowed former police minister Bheki Cele to tell MPs his successor, Senzo Mchunu, could not disband the political killings task team. A culture that centralised power in the presidency exacerbates this inertia.
Former acting deputy chief justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga. Picture: Freddy Mavunda (Freddy Mavunda)
Co-ordinating structures such as the legislated national intelligence co-ordinating committee (Nicoc), the national security council and Natjoints (national joint operational and intelligence structure), which is not established in law or regulation, bring together police, intelligence and defence in a further fudging of security decision-making structures and processes.
This structural opacity in governance creates conditions in which public and institutional accountability evaporate. Drop in a whisper of national security, which remains ill-defined and largely counter to SA’s constitutional founding values of accountability and transparency, and old-style secrecy trumps any meaningful oversight. It undermines the constitutional imperative of safety and security of all who live in SA.
If political will had existed — together with deliberate strategic planning and dedicated resource allocation — the various concrete reform proposals could long have been implemented for a professional police service.
Take the national policing board, which was outlined in the 2012 NDP to set “standards for recruiting, selecting, appointing and promoting police officials and police officers” and ethics. The 2018 expert panel report fleshed this out so that the national policing board would assist the president to appoint an SAPS national commissioner in a “transparent, competitive and merit-based recruitment process” and also help select provincial police commissioners.
“Senior police appointments are highly politicised, non-experts are appointed to senior positions, and the organisation is paramilitary in both structure and function,” the expert panel report found, emphasising that the SAPS “desperately” needed professionals in strategic positions for effective leadership.
Aside from overseeing the ethics regimen, crucially this policing board would institute the organisational refocus on competence rather than rank to ensure a police service tailored to the task. This would mean a desk-jockey general would no longer be able to give orders to a public order-trained colonel on how to handle a protest.
“Accountability is directly connected to governance and is crucial for good police-public relationships,” according to this report. “Accountability is indivisible from ‘principle-based policing’ because it can only exist if policing is based on principles of integrity, professionalism and truth-telling.”
Perhaps it is not surprising that Cele sat on this report for about three years before public pressure ensured its release in 2021. The skop, skiet en donner minister with a predilection for touring crime scenes took no action — and appointments, or suspensions, remain a toxic mess.
Without clear standards and criteria, the appointment process remains troubled; finding a permanent successor to former Hawks boss Godfrey Lebeya, who retired in May, is still under way.
This affects not only the SAPS but also the Hawks. It remains possible to appoint politically pliant officers, as happened when Mthandazo Ntlemeza was appointed Hawks head in September 2015, despite a judgment having found him “biased and dishonest” and “lacking in integrity”.
Although the courts ultimately declared this invalid in 2017, it did not happen before Hawks’ investigations were compromised, as the Zondo commission heard. Without clear standards and criteria, the appointment process remains troubled; finding a permanent successor to former Hawks boss Godfrey Lebeya, who retired in May, is still under way.
The police complaints oversight entity, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), exhibits different, bizarre governance failures. In 2016, amid Robert McBride’s controversial suspension, the Constitutional Court ordered measures to protect the top job from political meddling. Parliament passed the required legal protection, but it was unimplementable for about four years because President Cyril Ramaphosa failed to proclaim this 2019 law’s starting date until November 12 2024.
By then parliament had passed broader Ipid amendment legislation. Ramaphosa had signed this later law in July 2024 but took another 13 months, until August 2025, to proclaim starting dates for some clauses but not for others, including investigators’ appointments and responsibilities.
Such haphazard governance signals the lack of strategic thinking, planning and implementation for accountable, professional policing and the wider criminal justice system. It is not helped by distracting and ineffective quick fixes such as lifestyle audits, which are meaningless when not published, and security vetting, which does not guarantee integrity.
Policing is complex. But the path to a professional, accountable and trusted SAPS was mapped out long ago. What’s missing is the political will to walk it. Whether the findings from the current inquiries will finally have the persuasive weight to ensure qualitative change remains uncertain.
• Merten is a veteran political journalist specialising in parliament and governance.
