Allegations raised by the SAPS KwaZulu-Natal commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in July last year precipitated two distinct investigative processes. In response, President Cyril Ramaphosa established the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, while Parliament constituted a parallel ad hoc committee to independently examine the serious and far-reaching allegations. Across national, provincial, and municipal levels, the proceedings laid bare not merely allegations of misconduct, but deeper questions about judgment, accountability, and respect for constitutional norms.
They revealed how power is exercised, how oversight is understood — or resisted — and how personal loyalties and institutional self-preservation can eclipse the public interest. In this sense, the inquiries functioned less as a catalogue of individual claims and counterclaims, and more as an unvarnished mirror held up to the leadership of our policing architecture, exposing the values, or lack thereof, that shape decision-making at the very apex of law enforcement. While Mkhwanazi had already secured the trust and adoration of an exasperated public following his tectonic media briefing, the subsequent proceedings shifted the spotlight decisively onto the broader law-enforcement leadership.
In doing so, they effectively exposed their professional conduct, ethical posture, and constitutional loyalties for open inspection. What unfolded was not merely testimony, but an inadvertent audit of character: a rare moment in which the custodians of law and order were required to answer, without the comfort of closed doors, to the very society they are sworn to serve. Pressed by commission chairperson Justice Mbuyiseni Madlanga to explain his compliance with a directive from police minister Senzo Mchunu to disband the political killings task team, national commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola advanced a constitutional defence that, on its face, appeared internally contradictory.
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He contended that the minister’s instruction to immediately dissolve the specialised unit amounted to a “total encroachment” on his operational independence and fell well outside the minister’s lawful remit, which is confined to the determination of national policing policy. Yet, this principled position was articulated only after a guarded, and noticeably hesitant presentation. At first, Masemola appeared reluctant — if not timid — to assert his authority decisively in the face of clear ministerial interference.
The impression conveyed was not one of a commissioner robustly defending institutional independence, but of a functionary cautiously navigating political power. His admission that defying the minister’s manifestly irregular directive might have been “career limiting” further eroded his public standing. Far from eliciting sympathy, the remark reinforced a perception of compromised leadership, suggesting that self-preservation and career considerations had eclipsed constitutional duty.
In the court of public opinion, the moment crystallised a deeper unease: that the guardians of policing independence may be restrained less by law than by fear of political reprisal. In the final analysis, Masemola came across as a self-assured commander of beleaguered force who wields soft power, a contrast to Mkhwanazi who doesn’t mince his words even if doing so carries risks.
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