Listen here.The sacking of Major General Feroz Khan - who was tipped to be the next chief of Crime Intelligence (CI) in South Africa - has come amid speculation about who the really big villains behind the Big Five might be. In her latest interview with Chris Steyn, Juanita du Preez, the national spokesperson of Action Society, says: “...there were other people pulling strings and giving funding and so on because a lot of people had a lot to win in doing what they did…I think a lot of people who follow it very closely and have very intimate knowledge, they know and they are waiting to bring it in… people… want to see the people who were the big players in all of the corruption and the reason that we have so many problems, they want to see them suffer for what they've done.” Du Preez also comments on the latest Stats SA Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey that estimates that only 48,2% of the 1.549 million housebreaking incidents last year were reported to SAPS; calculations showing that nationally during 2024/25 eight million calls were received by 10111, but more than two million abandoned; as well as the long delays in getting cases through the courts. .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 every morning on 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..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.144)Major General Feroz Khan was one appointment away from being in complete control of Crime Intelligence in South Africa. But yesterday he was sacked by the South African police force. With me is Juanita du Preez, the national spokesperson of Action Society. Welcome JuanitaJuanita du Preez (00:19.308)Thank you for the opportunity. It's been some time, but it's always nice to speak to BizNewsChris Steyn (00:24.368)Your reaction to General Khan's dismissal.Juanita du Preez (00:29.262)Why did it take so long? That's my first reaction. We see all of these things and I think everybody's thinking, why is it taking so long? Why do we need to, and not just in the Madlanga Commission, this is, we've seen problems coming a long way. People have commented about it. There's been legal proceedings, but still nothing happened. So yeah, my initial response was why was it taking so long? But then, great, but it's not out of the Madlanga Commission issues. This was the disciplinary way he was kicked out.Chris Steyn (01:11.024)Yes, he still faces criminal charges and his attempts to avoid appearing in public and giving an account to respond to the allegations against him have been, have taken on reality TV proportions. Predictably, he is now fighting his dismissal.Juanita du Preez (01:27.502)Mm.Juanita du Preez (01:33.194)Of course, of course he's going to do that. He did that previously when he was in a disciplinary hearing. While I was going through all of this, I was just refreshing my memory of everything he did; it was here we are at a police disciplinary hearing again. And it reminded me so much of the Blue Light case that we are involved with, where the disciplinary hearing went on for a long time. And then eight of these guys with this video footage showing what they did and it's accepted in the court, the High Court, they got off. There was no disciplinary action against them. So it makes me think the police's disciplinary actions should be investigated because it seems like it's not going as it should. IIf people like Feroz Khan can get away and these people who were caught red-handed, if they can get away with that, then what does it say about the interdisciplinary hearings?Chris Steyn (02:42.415)Well, General Kahn is now set to lose all the privileges, legal and otherwise, that might have come with his possession as eventual head of Crime Intelligence if that process had not been derailed. But then he also now stands to lose if he's sacked, if he's sacking stands, his PolMed, his police medical aid - and with all his health problems and the wound that has to be tended, that could cost him quite a bit.Juanita du Preez (03:09.989)Shame. What I want to say is, shame. You know what, if you want to do the crime, then you have to do the time. There are risks involved with you doing crime. And if it catches up with you, then you're going to have to face the music. This is what happens when you're a criminal. And this is what happens when you're, ooh, when you're caught with your hand in the cookie jar.Chris Steyn (03:38.415)But it all fell apart at the last minute. I think that he had felt that he was untouchable.Juanita du Preez (03:47.326)I think so because he got away with it for so long he thought it was going to be same business as usual but I think people are waking up and they really want to see a scapegoat, they want to see the the people who were the big players in all of the corruption and the reason that we have so many problems, they want to see them suffer for what they've done. But I was thinking that we should not just be looking for individual people to take the axe. We should really look at the systems which allowed this to happen for so long… it's an open secret that South Africa, there's a lot of corruption in every sphere, but we're focusing on the...security, the safety part now, it's an open secret. People know about that and the systems allow it to happen. That is what we should be looking at.Chris Steyn (04:54.927)Otherwise, some people might take those positions vacated by the corrupt and become corrupt themselvesJuanita du Preez (05:02.731)Yeah, just a new face.Chris Steyn (04:54.927)Let's talk about Stats SA's latest survey. Last year, over a million and a half housebreakings occurred, but less than 50% got reported. I think that makes a mockery of the crime stats and you've always had a problem with those, the official stats.Juanita du Preez (05:23.549)Yeah, it is interesting when I was going through it, I thought it is so interesting because we always think people do report it just to get the insurance, the case number for the insurance. But then I thought, well, a lot of people in South Africa, I want to say the majority does not have insurance. So that is why it really seems like a very realistic figure that half of the house break-ins it's not reported because why would you report it if you don't need the insurance number? Because you know there's nothing going to come from it. You have to go and stand in a queue and in my experience listen to or be grilled by a very rude police officer. It's not always like that but that was my experience of it. And then they ask you a lot of unnecessary questions…you have to follow up and so on and then nothing comes of it. So why would you go through that if you don't have to? Just face it, your stuff has gone and buy new stuff or start buying the new stuff. That's it.Chris Steyn (06:35.119)Even if you wish to report it, you have to deal with the 10111 obstacle. In 2024-2025, 8 million calls were made to 10111. 2 million were simply abandoned. DroppedJuanita du Preez (06:40.491)Yeah.Juanita du Preez (06:53.933)Yeah, we also did a smaller scale survey obviously than StatsAS but where we asked people, if there is an emergency, a criminal emergency in your life, who would you turn to? Would you call 10111? Almost no people said they would call that. The first thing is a neighborhood watch, and the second is a private security company, which people would call. They do not trust, and rightly so, because if 2 million calls are dropped and it's a matter of life and death, then I would not trust that service. I would think, call the people who's going to respond. So yes, yeah, it's not looking good.Chris Steyn (07:38.947)Yeah, two million abandoned. Can you imagine that? On top of that, if you try and call a police station, research has shown that at about half of stations, the phone's not even answered.Juanita du Preez (07:51.178)I can tell you that from my own experience this week because I had a theft in Cape Town from my car. My whole suitcase was stolen from my car. And I'm trying to claim the insurance. So I have to call them to get a specific form. I've called the police, the constable, investigating officer. No response. What's up? And normal, nothing. No answer. And then I've called the police station several times, it rings and it goes dead. So how am I supposed to get that form? And I don't, this is not an emergency, so...Chris Steyn (08:33.337)Well, the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry is taking a short recess now. Those commissioners certainly deserve the break. I don't know what you think of their performance. I think they have been absolutely phenomenal, that they are top legal brains.Juanita du Preez (08:42.967)Yeah. Yeah.Juanita du Preez (08:50.187)Yeah, it seems like they've been working nonstop for it feels like years and years, but actually in the bigger scheme of commissions, it's not been that long, but it really does feel like they're putting in the hours. I know they go and sometimes they go to late into the night.So I think it's also good to just take a step back and just refresh because when you're in something you get so caught up with it that you it's almost a tunnel vision that you get so it's good to step back just refresh and then when they come back they can pick up again but then with a clear mind. So I think they do deserve a little bit of a breakChris Steyn (09:37.295)When we last spoke, it was more or less at the beginning of these inquiries and you were keeping an open mind. Have you made up your mind now about who the biggest villains are?Juanita du Preez (09:46.926)I think we all know who all of the big villains are, but I think not all of the names are...well known or public knowledge yet. In preparing for this interview, I thought it would actually, I would like to see at the end, when you watch a TV crime drama or something, they always have that big board with the red strings connecting everybody to each other. I would like to see that because you're gonna need a lot of string and a lot of pins to connect everybody. It's not just the Big Five.There are so many people connected to this whole network. It looks like a spider's web. I'm sure it will look like that. All the connections. But I would really like to see that at the end. To know these are the bad guys. These are the people who corrupted everything; they were involved to the detriment of all South Africans. So they should get what is coming to them.Chris Steyn (10:58.509)I wonder whether we are being gaslit about the Big Five. Who's behind the big five? They don't seem that big to me. Do they?Juanita du Preez (11:07.053)Yes, they call themselves the Big Five. So yeah, it's a nice gang name for yourself. But that's what I say. I'm not sure that we know everybody that is involved because there were other people pulling strings and giving funding and so on because a lot of people had a lot to win in doing what they did. I don't think we all, and I do hope in the end that we will know who it was, but at the moment there are still some names not mentioned and I think a lot of people who follow it very closely and have very intimate knowledge, they know and they are waiting to bring it in, but, yeah, I don't think we know yet.Chris Steyn (12:08.591)From the testimony we've now seen that the rot extends across the whole criminal justice system. It's not going to be easy for it to recover and to reform, is it?Juanita du Preez (12:20.715)No, it's, and I think we said that in the first couple of interviews that we did, it is not just what's coming from this commission now, but the total distrust people have in the criminal justice system. It is not gonna be a day to fix it. It's not gonna be a year to fix it.…you probably have to start from scratch and build it up again and get the right competent people in there to do the right, correct thing and the best for South Africa. But to get all of the right people there and then to fix everything that they broke, it is going to take really a long time. What I want to say is that when building up or thinking about making things better,the minister, the still acting minister of police, Cachalia, with the crime stats last week, which were released, I really enjoy listening to this guy when he speaks…it could just be that…Juanita du Preez (13:45.934)…I represent somebody who's so hungry for a good minister. So it could be that, but I hope it is not. But it feels like he really understands the problems that the police are facing, and that he really does want to fix it and is starting to fix it. Even though there are still some, the crimes are still very, very terrible. But at least it feels to me like there's a flickering of a light starting to shine and that's because of him. But that's the type of thing that we need to better the whole criminal justice system and that is why I say it's going to take so long because see how long Cachalia has been in the post acting and only now we start to see small changes. It's going to take a long time to fix it and the same with this whole new system level.Chris Steyn (14:52.035)Meanwhile, you are still batting every weekday to get cases through the courts and get justice for victims, some of whom have been waiting for many, many years. Is it as bad as ever?Juanita du Preez (15:02.337)Yeah, it's...It is, it's the delays. For me, that's the worst thing. Because, and there's various reasons for the delays. In the beginning of a case, it is the delays of waiting for the investigation to finish. And that's just the normal investigation, doing interviews and so on. Then we get to sending away for…DNA results, post mortems. DNA results get back faster than post mortems. And then toxicology reports, that takes forever. We are involved in a couple of cases where it took years for the tox report. And then it is a change to an inquest and it's not a court case anymore. So inquest is just when they're just establishing what the cause for the death was. It's a bit different than a murder case. Then it takes even longer because I think they see it as not so urgent because the person is already deceased and there's more urgent matters. It feels like that, I'm not sure. But it takes so long to get all of that stuff and then it goes to court. Most of the time all of that is not in yet so it gets postponed, postponed, postponed until all of those are there. And then the court rolls are so full when you eventually get to trial that you set out two days for trial. It's not enough because sometimes you have to squeeze in another case. Then it gets postponed six months later to continue for two days and it's…Juanita du Preez (16:56.575)…ot's so frustrating to see how long, extremely excruciatingly long it takes to go through the court system. And that is if your case does make it to the court system.Chris Steyn (17:11.757)Juanita, is there anything else you'd like to add?Juanita du Preez (17:15.661)Work-wise, I would like to say, I just want to thank people who support Action Society's work because we really cannot continue with what we are doing and we can see in the type of support that we give that South Africans are struggling financially. We want to thank the people who still continue to support us. It is difficult for us to continue doing the work if we do not have the resources. And then why I laughed is I just wanted to say I like my nails. If people want to complain about it, I'm a girl and I like my lipstick and I like my pink nails. So if you want to complain about it, go right to it. I don't care.Chris Steyn (18:08.335)I can sympathize. There are people who fixate on the colour of my lipstick while I'm talking about death and destruction. And I want to say this is BizNews, not OnlyFans.Juanita du Preez (18:23.341)There are more important things just to focus on than how somebody looks, please.Chris Steyn (18:28.875)Exactly. Thank you.That was Juanita du Preez, national spokesperson for Action Society speaking to BizNews, I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you, JuanitaJuanita du Preez (18:40.034)Thanks, Chris.