In this interview with BizNews Ian Cameron, the Chair of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, lists the reason why he has written to Police Minister Senzo Mchunu to ask for a review of the appointment of Major General Patrick Mbotho as Divisional Commissioner: National Priority Offences in the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation. Among the serious allegations against the general are that he posted various explicit and adult content to a Detectives Commander WhatsApp group on his official phone while he headed the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit; that he had meetings with individuals currently suspected of gang activity and extortion in the Western Cape; that he interfereed in criminal investigations and defeated the ends of justice. Cameron also gives an update on the other work of the committee which will tomorrow conduct an oversight visit to the Philippi Training College which “is renowned for corruption” – and where R114 million is alleged to be unaccounted for over a six-year period. And with the national Extortion Hotline going live tomorrow, Cameron shares details of the committee’s engagement with the police on the growing extortion crisis; gives his analysis of the latest crime figures – and slams the fact that Vice President Paul Mashatile’s VIP bodyguards – who last year assaulted people next to the N1 – are still in service. However, he does have praise for the new Police Minister and his deputies.
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Chris Steyn (00:04.553)
When Ian Cameron was at Action Society, was known as a man of action. And he has taken that sense of purpose and urgency with him to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, where he has been very busy. Welcome, Ian. Thank you for making time for BizNews.
Ian Cameron (00:22.861)
Thank you Chris, looking forward to talking with you.
Editorial Studio (00:27.059)
Well Ian, as Chairperson of the Committee you have written to the Minister of Police to ask for a review of the appointment of General Patrick Mbotho. There are very serious allegations against him. Please tell us about those.
Ian Cameron (00:40.695)
Yeah, Chris, so we learned this week about the promotion of General Mbotho in the Hawks. Now, unfortunately, I don’t know him as a person at all. I can just go on what is on paper. And the story that is told on paper is not a very good one. There are several allegations, but there was also evidence given in a court in Cape Town with regards to his interactions and physical face-to-face interactions with very senior organised crime kingpins in the Cape Town area, with several controversial figures that are currently standing trial on very serious charges, including murder, amongst other things. And interestingly enough, also with this whole extortion crisis, the people that he met with are linked to that too. That’s one of the problems.
Another problem is the fact that he was previously departmentally charged for sexual harassment, or so we are told. There were quite a few allegations regarding bullying and so on, but in my opinion that is just an allegation and it should be treated as such.
But also then, think a very worrying part is that while he was the Head of the Child Protection Unit or FCS as we know it now, the Family Violence Unit, it happened that he actually shared a whole lot of pornographic material with one of the detective groups. Now obviously what you do in your personal life is up to you, but I think our big issue with this amongst other things is that when you become a Lieutenant General in the South African Police Service, you really need to be beyond reproach.
And I was very disappointed in the reaction that we’ve had thus far from the Hawks. And the reaction was kind of one, but, you know, we should just give a second chance, that kind of thing. And in some jobs that might be okay. But when you become a Lieutenant General in the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, you uphold a very, very high standard, or you are meant to uphold a very high standard, and you should be held to a far higher standard than the average South African citizen.
Ian Cameron (02:55.508)
So it cannot be that you are just seen as having made a minor mistake or a small transgression. So nevertheless, those are some of the small questions that we can still dive deep into.
Chris Steyn (03:14.951)
His appointment was as divisional commissioner. It’s one of the top jobs in the country.
Ian Cameron (03:19.966)
Yeah, well, it’s divisional commissioner and I actually have it here in front of me. It’s specifically for Divisional Commissioner for National Priority Offenses. So it is a very, very senior job. He went from FCS in the South African Police Service. He was then put in a job specifically to head up Northwest province branch of the Hawks. Now this position would mean that he would become the Divisional Commissioner for the Hawks, for the National Priority Offenses Division.
I think what’s more that’s important about this, and these are the questions that we’ve asked as the committee, is who are the people that were actually shortlisted for this? We yesterday also questioned the fact that he’s got Top Secret Security Clearance. How on earth does he get Top Secret Security Clearance?
The Head of the Hawks said he does have that and they did check that, but we want to see the evidence, the proof, because if it is so that he has Top Secret Security Clearance, then we’ve got a serious problem with that process too, because if he is meeting with known extortion leaders, known very dangerous organised crime kingpins, and we saw one excuse from one police spokesperson saying that it was because of a complaint that one of these so-called gang leaders had about another gang leader. There’s nothing official about that. So they can provide no evidence that confirms that.
So I really am concerned. If someone like this has Top Secret Security Clearance, we need to start questioning the process to get security clearance, because on top of that, we’ve got a major problem with regard to the fact that it’s almost as though ethics don’t count anymore. So you’ve got a purely academic process to say that you’ve got X amount of years experience, you’ve completed X, Y and Z courses, but ethics don’t count. And this is what one of the members in the committee asked yesterday. They said, but wait a minute, ethics should surely weigh a considerable amount when it comes to a decision like this or a position like this in such an elite policing environment.
Ian Cameron (05:38.03)
And I think the last two or three things that we’ve asked is who was part of the recruitment panel because when you look at the recruitment process and I had a bit of a, let’s call it a short altercation with the Head of the Hawks about this yesterday, when he said that, but if we want to review this promotion we need to basically also say that we question the panel, the Appointment Panel. I said to him, absolutely, I do question the Appointment Panel. How does this Appointment Panel make a decision like this? How do they think citizens in South Africa feel when they hear about these kinds of appointments? And, you know, it was almost as though some people were a little bit taken aback by the fact that the committee was asking these questions. And the long and the short of it is, and this is what I said to them, I said to them, if nothing changes, then nothing changes. It’s that simple. We need to approach things differently. Otherwise, we’re going to maintain the status quo. And the current status quo of policing in South Africa is not a good one. So we need to turn the tide. And it’s embarrassing that we have to spend time on something like this when there are more than enough competent people in this country that could be filling those types of positions.
Chris Steyn (06:56.721)
Ian, you mentioned the extortion crisis and you have had engagement with the police on plans to deal with this growing problem. What came out of that?
Ian Cameron (07:06.36)
Yeah, so I think first it’s important to welcome the fact that at least there was some kind of a strategic guideline. I wouldn’t call it a plan in all honesty. And the reason just simply being that it didn’t give us any direction in terms of the measurables. What are the things that we can measure success with? So it was very difficult to determine how the police are going to measure whether they are successful in this let’s call it a campaign, or not. And how are they going to be held to account for this? A lot of the questions that we asked, for example, what kind of experience does the leader have that needs to lead a task team, for example, in the Eastern Cape, couldn’t be answered. Is it a specialised person? Will there be specialised courts? Is there an integrated strategy with the NPA? All of that was left out. And therefore, we’re to have to return again with the police and have them answer these questions…
This is the last negative about it and then a few positive things that I must share that I think it’s exciting to hear. In terms of the budget shortages there is a clear indication from the Minister of Police as well as the two deputy ministers that there really is a budget allocation problem in terms of the South Africa Police Service and that we need some kind of a budget amendment to ensure that detectives and Crime Intelligence maybe get more of the resources than are currently given to them. And unfortunately, what we said to the police yesterday is that you keep on telling us about budget shortages, but in your so-called strategy, you don’t give us the details of that budget. So how are we meant to help you? We said we want to help you. We want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but come and share the information with us, then we don’t expect to heaR operational plans because we understand that you need to maintain the initiative when you take on these organised criminal groups. But give us some more flesh to the bone and then we can start working on it.
In terms of the positives, Chris, I think there are quite a few. We have seen good successes over the last few weeks regarding extortion.
Ian Cameron (09:29.845)
Several cops were even arrested that have been found to be involved and it’s just all over the country, not just in the Eastern Cape. Tomorrow the National Hotline, Extortion Hotline goes live. I think it’s positive. A lot of people ask the Deputy Minister, you know, what’s the difference between this and all the others. She just said, please give us the benefit of the doubt. I agree with her. In fact, it could be someone that you might feel good to chat with at some stage because when you listen to her, and you see the approach and you see some of the successes that they have made it clear to me that there is a bit of a new broom in the house, you know, that they are sweeping clean and we must understand that it will take time. And that’s why an appointment like this in the Hawks, like we spoke about now with General Mbotho, is so infuriating actually because we need to clean house. And while I know the Minister and the two deputies really are pushing to clean more, it doesn’t help if the leadership of some of the law enforcement bodies are counterproductive and they are making these types of appointments.
So yeah, I think there quite a few successes. They also told us that they would be focusing on level 3 to 5 targets, which means that it’s a higher level target in terms of the kingpins that they want to arrest or the criminals that they’re targeting. Whereas up to now, it’s been predominantly focused on level 1 and 2.
Chris Steyn (10:50.315)
Ian, you also recently had a briefing from the National Commissioner SAPS operations nationwide. What did you take away from that? How optimistic did that make you feel?
Ian Cameron (11:02.963)
I’ve got mixed feelings. It’s good that we see so many arrests for certain types of offences. We see seizures of large amounts of illicit material, whether it is drugs, firearms, you name it, it’s all there. So in that sense, it does seem that we are fighting back. We do also seem to see an increase in larger operational successes, especially where there are confrontations with very violent criminal groups and we’ve seen all the incidents where a lot of these criminals ended up being shot dead when they engaged the police with firearms or other weapons.
So in that sense, I think we should welcome it and I’m excited to see that the police on ground level are in many cases being allowed to do police work and that they’re not just expected to sit and watch and be reactive and just give you a case number for insurance purposes.
But I think the big question to me is: I keep on, and I said this to them yesterday, keep on hearing about numbers of arrests. There’s no use in, for example, Operation Shanela that they speak of very often, that we’ve had over 800,000 arrests. Those 800,000 arrests mean absolutely nothing when you look at the low prosecution rate. General Sibiya, who leads a divisional commission of Organised Crime Unit, gave a very very logical and very good explanation to this yesterday, and said, remember, a lot of cases end up being withdrawn in court. And therefore we’ve got the statistic about this case, but it doesn’t show prosecution. And the reason is very often withdrawn. So I understand that. But at the same time, it’s important that we then indicate which cases are the ones that are withdrawn and which cases weren’t withdrawn, but were never prosecuted. Because it seems that we’re arresting a whole lot of people, but we don’t see them stay behind bars. And if you speak to to some of the researchers and even some criminals that have cleaned up their lives and so on, they will all tell you that the consequences are so limited that it’s a very lucrative thing for them to get involved with. And that’s why the whole extortion crisis has become such an amazing business model in South Africa and I’m making it sound good, it’s evil, but people do it because it’s low risk, you immediately get cash.
Ian Cameron (13:29.315)
And it’s so easy to intimidate people. And if you get any kind of local pushback, you just get some cops on your payroll.
Still, I believe the majority of South African Police Service members are good people and that they do have the right intentions. And I can vouch for many of them. But unfortunately, it’s expected often that local cops have to investigate these organised crime groups. And it’s just not a sustainable model. You can’t expect a cop to investigate the person that lives across the road from him or that they know where his wife works or where his kids go to school. It makes it extremely complex and obviously the risk is very, very high and therefore extortion or other organised crimes just end up flourishing.
Chris Steyn (14:13.517)
Well, Ian, you have also analyzed the latest crime statistics. And what are your biggest concerns from that?
Ian Cameron (14:21.754)
Yeah, so in terms of crime stats and where we are at the moment, it’s still not a good picture. It’s going to take a long time for us to see a good picture and I don’t know when we can decide that it’s moving, it really is good. At the moment, we’re still seeing very close to 80 murders per day in South Africa. That’s just over three per hour. That’s war zone rates. It is extremely worrying.
And again, we see many many many of these cases go undetected; in other words they end up being closed due to either lack of evidence But but it comes back to poor investigation or no investigation and my heart bleeds for the detectives because the more I speak with the detectives….I actually had a call with the two detectives this morning and if I listen to the circumstances in which they work I my heart breaks for them because so many of them do so much and they literally pay for a lot of the things they need to do, even in terms of transport, etc. They pay from their own pockets because the State doesn’t provide the resources that they need to get the job done. And then you speak to cops that have got 300 plus dockets each. It’s just, it’s an impossible task.
So yeah, back to the crime stats. That’s the murder rate. The challenge that we have is that the last quarter that for the previous financial year that was meant to be released just before the election, you’d remember was not released by the then Minister Bheki Cele. And I think it was likely a political move because it painted a very, very bad picture. I mean, you looked at a province like the Western Cape showed a 20% increase in murder at that stage, which is absolutely massive. And I think it just would have highlighted the need for devolution and that whole discussion. In terms of the first quarter of the new financial year, there seemed to be some stabilisation.
I agree with the new Police Minister and it’s important that we give him an opportunity to also indicate his strategic leadership. So it’s going to take another, I’d say, three to five quarters about for us to really start seeing if there is a real impact being made.
Ian Cameron (16:40.087)
But yeah, crime stats don’t seem to be really changing. What is, I guess, positive in a sense is that in this first quarter of the new financial year, we didn’t see any major violence increases. There was a bit of stabilisation in terms of those offenses.
Chris Steyn (17:02.781)
Lastly, Ian, what are the priorities of the committee? What have you identified as urgent to be dealt with?
Ian Cameron (17:12.244)
Yeah, so obviously we want to help everyone. We would love to and that would be the ideal, but we simply don’t have the capacity. And yesterday I said to a member of a different political party at the end of the committee, you know, who said, we play an advisory role. And I stopped him. I said, wait a minute, we are not an advisory body. We are there for two main reasons. One is legislation and the other one is oversight.
In terms of oversight, we have identified certain issues that we believe that if we fix them, it should siphon through to fix other problems. So let me give you an example. This whole issue with General Mbotho is a very good example and it’s going to become one of the main reasons why we will zoom in in the coming months on senior appointments in SAPS because it’s demoralising to good cops when they see these kinds of characters being promoted. So we will zoom in on these types of things.
Then tomorrow we’re actually doing an oversight visit to the Philippi Training College. Now the Philippi Training Academy is renowned for corruption. 114 million rand that’s alleged to be unaccounted for over a six-year period hasn’t been audited. I’ve written to the minister, phoned the advisor. I’ve really from a committee’s point of view, we’ve really given the police and the Hawks the benefit of the doubt, but there are just no results. And last week, Friday, we indicated to them that tomorrow we will be visiting the Philippi Training Academy and that we expect a briefing to tell us what has been done about the corruption allegations and the investigation, because the Hawks have been running an inquiry for almost a year. Now, it’s not that complex. There’s no reason for it to have taken this long. I’ve even reached out to the Head of the Hawks at one stage and I said to him that the Hawks are busy calling people to make statements on the intercom at the college. And now the accused can sit there or the people being implicated can sit there and watch who’s going to make a statement. So, yeah, tomorrow we actually going there and we expect this briefing and it’s gonna be very interesting to see whether the characters that have been implicated are still hanging around there because according to me they are.
Ian Cameron (19:29.115)
No one has been stopped from going there. There’s been no disciplinary action. So typically if we clean up some of the institutions, then surely you’ll see a healthier feed of quality young cops that come into the police service.
And then I think furthermore, apart from appointments and training, we will continuously zoom in on the disciplinary process that is really lacking. An example is the VIP 8, Paul Mashatile’s bodyguards from last year. You remember how they assaulted people next to the N1 and they are still in service of SAPS and I think it’s disgraceful. And two weeks ago, in my opening remarks at the committee, I said to the police’s management, it is an absolute disgrace that South Africans have to continue paying the salaries of these men that so blatantly not only committed crimes, but disregarded the very uniform that they are meant to uphold with integrity and with pride. And it’s a slap in the face to all the good cops that do wear the uniform with such pride.
Those are the types of matters that we will continually follow up. We’ve also come to the point now where some of these matters are becoming standing points on the agenda. And no matter how uncomfortable it is, we’re gonna continue asking the questions. We will fulfill our oversight role to the best of our ability, but we’re not just gonna sit and see it as business as usual. We’re not there to keep seats warm.
In fact, I feel strongly about the fact that I think SAPS management needs a complete audit to be done, a skills audit to be done to determine whether management members are there because of merit. And if not, they need to be removed and we need to handle it as such.
I’ve also started playing with the idea that we will refer some of the appointments to the committee of the Public Service Commission, and then ask the Public Service Commission to investigate these matters and to determine whether these appointments were done according to the relevant requirements or the skills that you need in order to fulfill your duties in that position.
Ian Cameron (21:40.492)
So, in a very broad sense, I think that’s the direction in which we’re going. So it’s basically appointments, training, then disciplinary processes, and obviously corruption. I think if we fix those strategic points, then a lot of the other issues will start resolving.
There quite a few matters that I can’t say out loud at the moment that we are busy asking questions about and the reason is just simple, I want to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt. And they have responded to everything that we’ve asked so far. And the new Minister as well as the two deputies really have gone out of their way to attend the committee, to support the committee and to be transparent.
Ian Cameron (22:35.297)
I think it’s important to give them credit for the way that it’s been done. I think it’s time that the South African Police Service management as well as the Hawks pull their socks up because it’s becoming very uncomfortable that both from the minister and the deputy minister’s side and from the committee’s side; we are asking questions that they’re not used to answering.
Chris Steyn (22:53.782)
Yeah, I think you have brought in a level of accountability that they have not encountered before, Ian. Thank you very much for giving BizNews viewers an update on the work of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police. And that was Ian Cameron, MP, speaking to BizNews. And I’m Chris Steyn. Thank you, Ian.
Ian Cameron (23:14.872)
Thanks so much, Chris.
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