Ian Cameron: Assassination, looting - but high-profile arrests and a good-news budget

In his latest interview with BizNews, Ian Cameron, the Chair of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, gives his take on the apparent assassination of the Head of the Ekurhuleni Forensic Audit Investigation Division, Mpho Mafole, saying: “…what happened with him, it unfortunately has become the norm, especially for people that work in these types of departments”. Commenting on the arrests of Crime Intelligence (CI) chief General Dumisani Khumalo and other high-ranking police officers, Cameron states: “…if cases are proved through this and successful prosecution does happen, it will stand as one of the biggest moves of its kind in South Africa, ever, from what I know.” He also has some good news about the latest SAPS budget: “I must tell you from all the annual performance plans, strategic plans that I've ever seen of the South African Police Service, this is really the best one.” One of the highlights is a “massive push” to better allocate resources to Public Order Policing. However, he expresses “huge concerns” about the integrity management of PSiRA where the very people being implicated in significant corruption just stay in their positions. “South Africans can't go without private security, but now the very people that need to police private security also need policing.”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview .Chris Steyn (00:02.264)The forensic audit chief of the Ekurhuleni municipality has been gunned down. We speak to Ian Cameron, the chair of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police. Welcome, Ian.Ian Cameron (00:15.234)Thank you very much, Chris. I wish once again it would be under better circumstances, but as you correctly said, yet another what seems to be assassination.Chris Steyn (00:25.398)Any more information at this stage, Ian?Ian Cameron (00:29.496)Chris, what we know so far is that, as you correctly said, he's the head of the Ekurhuleni Forensic Audit Investigation Division. His name is Mpho Mafole. And he was shot and killed while driving on the R23 in Kempton Park on Monday. Now, before we zoom in on exactly what happened with him, it unfortunately has become the norm, especially for people that work in these types of departments. He had previously, I think for close to 14 years, worked for the Auditor General of South Africa before he moved to Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipalities Forensic Audit and Investigation Division. And we are told that the relevant authorities of the South African Police Service are looking at the motive behind the murder, but a lot is already indicating assassination from what we know.It really is becoming very difficult to motivate people to tell them to work in these types of positions because how do know that they will receive any kind of protection? It's very easy to say, you just need to get a job done. But essentially, there is a lot at stake for many people. And if these types of divisions or departments do their jobs to the best of their ability, obviously you might end up exposing people that certainly don't want to be exposed. And it directly affects their bottom line. In short, the incident happened between 5 and 6 PM on Monday. And he was or they found him lying in his car where he had already passed on due to being wounded by several gunshots.Yeah, we'll have to see what the investigation brings forward.Chris Steyn (02:25.412)Well, meanwhile, those arrests of Crime Intelligence chief General Dumisani Khumalo and other high-ranking police officers are still in the news and we haven't had a chance to talk about that. Ian, I know there's still a lot happening. What can you say at this stage?Ian Cameron (02:42.966)Yeah, so I mean, we've welcomed it so far and said that if it indicates wrongdoing and if the relevant investigation is done, then obviously it's good to clean up. At the same time, I've read a lot of speculation as well, and we need to understand that there is a process that needs to take its course now, and a case needs to be proven or not disproved.But again, I think it should never have gotten to this point. The bigger question we should be asking is what went wrong in terms of SAPS integrity management? What makes it difficult to say that there's nothing wrong here and that it's just smoke and mirrors is that why would an institution like IDAC take the risk of making these types of high profile arrests without having something of substance behind it? And I think we can all see that it really is a very bad indictment on the broader integrity management of the South African Police Service. I've read a lot of speculation of who may be next and who's also on the list, and I've seen what's being circulated. But in all honesty, very little or few people really know exactly who's going to be arrested next, if any. And we'll have to see what happens in court. What bothers me is the fact that we haven't had confirmation about whether all of these members have been suspended. It concerns me. I have sent a request to the Minister earlier this week to ask for urgent suspension. And that's also to protect the integrity of the actual investigation. It's one thing to suspend if you've got a good idea that someone did do something wrong. But it's also to protect that person that when you do the suspension or if you relieve someone from their duties until further notice, it gives an opportunity for an objective detailed investigation to be done and completed successfully. It makes it difficult in that environment. It always has been but has become an increasingly toxic cloak and dagger kind of environment. You know, essentially it's the ordinary South African that suffers from it.Ian Cameron (05:01.922)So we'll have to see. I am sure we'll get a decent briefing quite soon from the Police Minister. I have written to him also to ask that when the time is better, we should have such a briefing. The reason for saying that as well is it's one of those situations that you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don’t. The point is just that a lot of it is subjudice now and I think, you know, as I've said in many other cases, you can sometimes cause more damage by certain types of discussions. So we'll have to see. The one thing I must also mention that I am concerned about is the broader silence from political leadership in and around the ministry as well. It does make it difficult to understand what's going on and it's creating a lot of doubt and yeah it's creating doubt and I almost want to call it instability not necessarily in a literal sense but that police members on ground level also don't really know what is actually going on. If cases are proved through this and successful prosecution does happen, it will stand as one of the biggest moves of its kind in South Africa, ever, from what I know. And what would be quite bad or alarming about it is that, obviously it's good to clean up, but the bad part or the indictment is that we never learned from the Mdluli era. And we must also ask what influence those types of stakeholders still have because, for example, Mdluli's got several family members that are still employed by the South African Police Service and are still in Crime Intelligence, namely two of his sons as well, and I think his wife or ex-wife. And I mean, those were Auditor-General findings. That's not just me sucking it out of my thumb. So it leaves a lot to be desired. And I think we need to also question…Ian Cameron (07:15.822)…why do things always have to go this far for it to be attended to? There are so many different appointments all over the South African Police Service that have raised significant concern, whether political, corrupt, you name it, but it just never really gets resolved. They always kick for the sideline.And now we are at a risk where it poses significant instability risk to the entire senior management of the South African Police Service.Chris Steyn (07:48.58)Now reacting to those arrests Ian, a viewer posed a very important question to me. When will President Cyril Ramaphosa lance the boil or is Crime Intelligence now part and parcel of a State that remains captured for purposes of looting?Ian Cameron (08:07.032)Sure, it's a very, very strong question. Look, there's no doubt that intelligence services for a very long time have been abused, used and abused for political and definitely for financial gain. Up until today, if you look at the types of vehicles and lavish lifestyles that some of these Crime Intelligence senior police members enjoy, then there's no doubt that something is wrong because the image just certainly doesn't suit what the regular payment or salary would justify. So, yeah, to be blatantly honest, and I think if we look at the Zondo Commission result or what came out of that, we haven't seen any of the senior politicians implicated. They're not being arrested or prosecuted. There's always some kind of a sugarcoating exercise or kicking for the sideline. And it's always as though we've got this kind of a mentality of sitting under a tree and waiting for better days instead of actually taking it on and bringing that change. And if you look at reports, I think I've talked to you about it before, if you look at reports by, for example, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, we can understand that South Africa is performing so well as an organised crime capital if we consider the mess that we're seeing at the moment with the management of the South African Police Service. Now, don't tell me...that many of the senior managers that should have known, whether it's in the National Commissioner's office or elsewhere, didn't know about what was going on. And there's just no way that these sums of money can be passed around, recycled, used, and abused without certain people knowing, which just raises eyebrows even more. I must also say that I know from our committee side, we've got a very limited scope over Crime Intelligence. The rest goes to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence. And I wish I could be a fly on the wall there to hear what some of these briefings say. You need to have Top Secret security clearance to be in that specific committee.Ian Cameron (10:26.542)And I'm sure that the majority of people on the Police Committee would want to also sit in there and actually hear what's going on.Chris Steyn (10:37.486)Well, from looting to the budget, let's talk about the SAPS budget, IPID’s budget.Ian Cameron (10:45.23)Yeah, so it's very interesting. I mean, everyone knew the budgets couldn't be passed, and it was this way, that way, and lots of political debate and let's call them political clashes. But I think there are a few really positive things that also came out of this budget process and I need to start with the allocations that we've seen in the budget. Now, everything's not perfect, certainly not. But I must tell you from all the annual performance plans, strategic plans that I've ever seen of the South African Police Service, this is really the best one. I've never seen one that's so well integrated, so well planned. They integrated the recommendations by Parliament so extremely well, and it was really, really positive to see the feedback. So it makes it even more sad that we're going through this whole process now with arrests and charges and potential prosecution when we actually have an opportunity to really turn the ship. Now, what are we looking at? I mean, I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but generally speaking, we've seen that there is a massive push to better allocate resources to Public Order Policing. Now, this is good and bad because on the bad side, one would then think that they expect more unstable conditions or civil unrest of some kind. But at the same time, Public Order Policing in terms of resources, those units are very, very far behind and a lot of them are really struggling and it's putting those members at risk. So I think it's positive to see that over the medium term, they are getting a significant amount of resources pushed to them. They are specifically looking at better recruitment, specialised equipment and better training, additional training, which is also fantastic. We've seen, unfortunately, that at many of the different units, people are deployed there, but when they actually have to go and work in the specific circumstances that that unit was designed for, they haven't really been trained to do that. There's a big push for further strengthening of visible policing. I've got mixed feelings on this.Ian Cameron (13:03.694)It's again taking close to 50% of SAPS's total budget. I think we are way too obsessed with visible policing. Visible policing does make an impact, but it's not the sustainable model for fighting organised crime or organised violent crime like gang violence, for example. Visible policing, generally speaking, assists with some kind of stabilising effort. And then once those resources withdraw from an area after the deployment, things just continue as per usual again. I think a lot more could have been done to assist with the whole issue regarding promotion and greater progression of administrative staff in the South African Police Service. I think they've been significantly neglected. And then also, more importantly, is to look at detectives. How can we better incentivise detectives?Ian Cameron (13:59.02)How can we actually draw more people to want to become detectives and to keep the good, you know, retain the good and experienced members as detectives? Furthermore, a lot will be looking at the better modernisation of 10111 of the emergency call centres. This is in terms of transitioning towards more digital kind of call taking, GPS integration, et cetera. I personally think they have a major risk there at the moment in terms of recruitment as well because they simply do not have the human resources they need. And then the last few things, Chris, includes a better move and this is really positive to see in the budget that SAPS for the first time so prominently writing about prosecution-led investigation and this is critical to me. This is the Scorpion kind of mindset that we need to have. So it's really good to me to see that they are working in that direction. I hope that they have had the relevant discussions or are having the relevant discussions with the NPA to make sure that detectives work alongside prosecutors as it should have been done in any case. And then the last part for SAPS is the better allocation of resources for broader reforms should the SAPS Amendment Bill actually happen now. I'm not going to go into detail. Maybe the SAPS Amendment Bill is a specific discussion that we should have at some stage. But this bill has been coming a very, very long time. And it's something that will assist in a lot of issues, confusion, maybe legislation that's perceived as poor, even regulations within the South African Police Service. And that's why this amendment bill is critical. And obviously, you would need budgetary allocations for the relevant resources should reforms come out of that bill.Chris Steyn (15:55.758)Okay, now rural safety remains a huge concern. What progress is being made with implementing a strategy that we have discussed?Ian Cameron (16:06.038)Yeah, look, the strategy is only that. It's only on paper. If it remains on paper, something needs to be implemented. It seems that with the visible policing exercise, there would be more resources for rural safety as well for ground level units. Remember that rural safety is not necessarily a big national unit that would intervene in significant violence or crime in rural areas, but that each station has a rural capacity of some kind and so do the different districts and then you have a coordinator per province and they obviously then coordinate on a national level with each other, what they mean to. Unfortunately over the years I think that structure is not necessarily as strong as it could be and we can see that the impact of, for example, attacks on farms, whether farmers or farm workers, the damage and vandalisation or theft of critical infrastructure in rural areas, and then obviously stock theft, is almost economic terrorism in rural areas that really ends up numbing an entire industry in parts of the country. So we are hoping that visible policing will see more of that. I still feel strongly about it being prioritised. One can go and define exactly what needs that specialised capacity. Is it only violent attacks or would it include, for example, stock theft and critical infrastructure? In my opinion, it should be all three. And one would need to go and structure that capacity properly. But you need specialised capacity to really safeguard rural areas.Chris Steyn (17:57.268)And meanwhile, there is this huge imbalance between private security and the South African Police Force. For 400 rand a month, you can have armed guards at your house within minutes while you can't get through to the police. And for many people who cannot afford that 400 rand a month, it is a huge issue.Ian Cameron (18:17.698)Yeah, I mean, PSiRA, we've gone through their budget as well. And a lot of their budget is being pushed towards better technology and so on, and let's say better regulation, apparently. But that being said, and the reason why I mentioned PSiRA is that I think that the private security industry has actually filled a huge void that was left by the state. We all know this. South Africa cannot at the moment function properly without the use of private security because the State simply does not have the capacity to do what they need to do. And that's self-inflicted. That's no one else's fault. The State caused that situation for themselves. So the reason why I mentioned PSiRA is there are huge concerns about the integrity management of PSiRA itself. We've recently called for the suspension of the COO and CFO of CIRA. That has still not been done. So it's becoming really frustrating to work with some of these departments because you talk and you talk and you warn and you keep writing, but it often feels like it falls on deaf ears. And you see the very people being implicated in significant corruption just stay in their positions. With PSiRA, that has been the case with the UIF fraud committed there in a space of over four to six years, where over 100 million rand has, let's say, vanished, for lack of a better word.And I think that, you know...it makes it very difficult because South Africans can't go without private security, but now the very people that need to police private security also need policing. So, you know, I think there needs to be a broader integrity management overall.Chris Steyn (20:18.946)Lastly, Ian, what's the biggest issue that your committee is grappling with at the moment?Ian Cameron (20:25.208)So they're quite a few things. I mean, we've been really busy with the budget as of late. We've had to, because of the budget and the budget debate, bump quite a few of the committee sessions forward to coming weeks. One of the next sessions that we'll have is a specific zoom in on the Integrated Justice System. This is critical. This is something that has been talked about for many, many years. And for, you know, in layman terms, I think the principle of, for example, the NPA and SAPS sharing a system in terms of seeing where's prosecution, where's the docket, who's the investigator, what stage is the investigation at, when is the person, you know, everything being integrated is absolutely critical. If you go, for example, to the NPA right now and you say to them, I wanna see the case where Chris Steyn, was, I don't know, robbed. There's no way, there's no integrated system for them to see exactly that and what the progress in that specific case is. What has the prosecutor done after the suspect was arrested and charged? And where's the detective, et cetera, are we receiving, if the investigation is continuing, are we receiving continued updates on that? And so the list goes on.One of our next very focused sessions will be the Integrated Justice System. And then obviously there are quite a few more that will then continue in September.Chris Steyn (22:02.776)Thank you. Thank you. That was Ian Cameron, Crime Activist, Democratic Alliance MP and chair of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, speaking to BizNews. And I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you, Ian.Ian Cameron (22:16.92)Thank you, Chris.

Ian Cameron: Assassination, looting - but high-profile arrests and a good-news budget

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