Willem Els: The Commander who trained Genl. Mkhwanazi to handle bombs…

KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is “not scared of all types of bombs”. So says former police commander Willem Els, who is now with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) as Senior Training Coordinator in the ENACT organised crime programme. Els tells BizNews that the “bomb” dropped by the General last Sunday took “tremendous courage”. Els, who trained the General in Bomb Disposal, described him as a”disciplined officer, a straight talker, a straight shooter, a straight walking” officer who is doing “the right thing as a policeman in his heart, in his actions…”, stressing: “He's a policeman in heart and down to the bone.” Apart from training the General, Els also worked with him on s number of foreign missions, and the two even had to “hot extract” former President Thabo Mbeki and then Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma from a coup in Haiti. They also worked together in Mozambique “where we lifted arms caches and destroyed huge, huge numbers of arms and munitions”, as well as in Equatorial Guinea in preparation of an African Union Summit. Els warns that it would “hurt” President Cyril Ramaphosa “very much” if he deals with the general’s allegations of police-underworld links by using the “old playbook that the ANC (African National Congress) has been using ever since they came to power”. As for threats that black and white citizens could even riot together if the KZN general is not treated right, Els notes there are people who say “we might see a repeat of 2021 if people feel that they're not being listened to…”.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 (00:02.123)Welcome to the Sunday Show with me, Chris Steyn. I apologise for the absence of Neil De Beer, the President of the United Independent Movement, who is too ill to be with us today. However, we do have a former police commander, Willem Els, who is now with the Institute for Security Studies. Welcome, Willem.Willem Els (00:25.71)Thank you, Chris.Chris Steyn (00:28.065)Well, let's go back to last Sunday when the KZN provincial commissioner dropped a bomb. You know him very well. You trained him. Give us your impressions of him, please.Willem Els (00:43.148)Yes Chris, it was a bomb indeed, not that he's scared of all types of bombs. Yeah, it was back in the late 90s where Sergeant Mkhwanazi attended a Bomb Disposal course that I presented. And that is one of the five or six courses that a Task Force operator must successfully complete before they can achieve the operator's badge. General Mkhwanazi is still wearing today. Yeah, and then because of our close relationship and work with the Special Task Force at Bomb Disposal, we also worked in Mozambique…where we had an annual intervention into Mozambique, where we lifted arms caches and destroyed huge, huge numbers of arms and munitions, et cetera. We also worked together for some time.And then in 2001, we were sent to Haiti. It was a bicentennial celebrations of the independence of Haiti we were invited to. South Africa was invited and they also asked us to come and help them to plan because they invited quite a number of heads of state. And so Mkhwanazi was then the Commander of the Task Force members that went there, and I was in charge of the Bomb Disposal members that went there. So we worked together for some time, and while we were there, there was a coup d'etat, and we had to hot extract President Mbeki and then Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma. And yeah, at the end of the day, it was a hot extraction from them to Jamaica. They took president with them or he followed them, I can't remember, and he ended up in South Africa with some 40 of his staff and stayed here and at end of the day he worked at, I think as an extraordinary professor at UNISA for some time before he went back. But that was not the end. Then General Mkhwanazi obviously he made it through the ranks and he became a very prominent police officer. And in 2012, once again, he asked me to assist him…Willem Els (02:54.86)…where he was selected or tasked to lead a delegation of police officers to Equatorial Guinea. They were going to host the African Union Summit, and we had to go and assist him with the planning and do the planning for them, et cetera, et cetera. So there, once again, we spent quite a few weeks, if not months. And that was just before I resigned from the police. So my whole career… I actually worked close with him and not every day, but very often.Chris Steyn (03:26.017)So what is the bottom line when it comes to his character, Willem?Willem Els (03:30.786)Yeah, if you look at his character, and I mean he demonstrated it of late, you know, that at one of the webinars or seminars that we spoke and the question came up and I...I actually, yeah, I said that, you know, I know him as a straight talker, also a straight shooter. And the use of firearms in the case it was discussed, as people, yeah, hopefully they didn't take it wrong. But what he means with him is, you know, he's a straight shooter, he's a straight talker. He's without blemish when it comes to his career. His whole career, he went through the career, through the ranks and… My impressions of him was that he's strict, he's very disciplined and a nonsense type of police officer.Chris Steyn (04:22.039)Were you shocked at what he had to say last Sunday?Willem Els (04:29.89)I wouldn't say I was shocked. You know, we work a lot on, especially on organised crime, transnational organised crime at the Institute. And there we, for some time now, we have been saying it in interviews, also coming out in one of our papers that will be released shortly. Where we look at your organised crime triangle, the hierarchy of your organised crime. And there, what we picked up, and we tested it against quite a few of the organised crime syndicates. And what they do is at the top of your triangle, the kingpin, they got a name for it, I think it is in Zulu, they call it… And it's interesting that I believe that the translation from ….is the minister. So if that is the truth, do they just call him the minister because he is a kingpin, or is he the real minister? That we do not know as yet. But now the revelation of General I wouldn't say I was shocked, that makes it more credible.What we have been working, it's a murky field that you're working in. And that paper has been delayed for some time because we have to verify, we have to make very sure that what goes out there is verified. So we have been working on that. And we also, even with the previous minister, we are on record, we said, your rot starts from the head and the fish rot from the head. So you have to start at the head and clean up. I mean, since the days of our Crime Intelligence service, it was compromised. I mean, one scandal after the other, after the other. But that even goes further back. If you look at our national commissioners, since the first political appointment that was General Selebi, including him, not one of the national commissioners that have been appointed were not arrested or left under a cloud up till today. And that's an indication to us that there's a serious problem within the Police Service. And now you take that on the one side and on the other end, you look at the crime statistics. It's not a surprise that we do not have the means to really bring those crime statistics down. They're extremely high. If you look at the organised crime index,…,or the programne that I work for, we do extensive research on that.Willem Els (06:50.422)We look at criminality in countries in Africa and also in the world, but we see that South Africa is ranked number three in Africa when it comes to criminality. It's only DRC and Nigeria that ranks above us. And we are ranked number seven in the world in terms of criminality. If you look at the Mafia State Index, we are clustered in the upper quadrant with countries like Mexico and Italy. So, mean, worse than that, you cannot go. And if things are just going to continue the way it's continued in the recent past, I cannot see that we are going to survive.Chris Steyn (07:35.499)How do you rate the performance of the Police Minister over the past year?Willem Els (07:41.166)You know, it was to me, and I'm honest with you, to me it was a tremendous disappointment to hear what Mkhwanazi said. Because if you look at the minister, when he was appointed as the minister, of course, the police was at an all-time low. They survived Cele that was not the best of police ministers that we had. I mean, he was found not to be fit to serve as a policeman in internal, what do you call it, tribunal after he was, and then he was fired, and then they appointed him as a minister. So he started on the back foot and he remained on the back foot ever since he became the minister. And he did not really make a very big impact in fighting crime in South Africa when it comes to the crime statistics because it just kept on rising and rising; and went through the roof. And that is one of their mandates. They have to take ownership of that. So when the minister came in, we saw that he was much more pragmatic. We saw that he came up with the four different fields of focus fields that he called it, where he looked at” one of them was fighting corruption. The other one was looking at technology. The other one was your public partnerships, your partnerships with the police and public private sector partnerships. And I mean, that was wonderful. We saw that he started to implement that. We saw that he was quite decisive in bringing that agenda. And he made all the right noises. And we thought that really we're to see a difference now. And then Sunday came.Chris Steyn (09:23.681)But before Sunday came, did we see a difference?Willem Els (09:27.788)I think we saw, I think you saw a difference within the police management, you saw within the police officers. There was more direction. We saw that he also, he allowed the national commissioner to take control. Bheki Cele was the minister and the commissioner. He was running around on crime scenes and interrogating suspects.Yeah, so we saw, especially if you look at especially the incident where those police officers drowned here in Pretoria when they were deployed to Limpopo, how the national commissioner came on board, how he dealt with the situation, et cetera. It really, he started to really install trust of the public in him that he's taking decisive leadership, et cetera. So...So yeah, I think we started to see a change. But remember, you're not going to turn around a big ship in one or two hours. You're to take days to turn that ship around. And the same with the police. It's a very big, it's a mighty organisation. It's the biggest police force in the world. So to turn that around, it's not going to take two weeks or three weeks. It's going to take months and years to really turn it around.Chris Steyn (10:43.883)Meanwhile, judging by the comments on social media, the KZN general has tremendous public support and political support as well from most quarters. And I see a march, a Hands-Off march is being planned for him in support of him this week. But now we hear that he may not renew his contract when it expires. What do you think is the right thing for him to do?Willem Els (11:12.246)Yeah, you know, I think he became the hope of South Africa. There's South Africans that want to see change. There's South Africans that are fed up with crime. There's South Africans that are fed up with government corruption, et cetera, et cetera. And he became the glimmer of hope for them. And him leaving them now, it might maybe not be the right thing to do in their eyes. But we also know that his contract might come to an end because...the provincial commissioner is normally appointed for a period of five years and we believe it's coming to an end soon. And we would hope that he would continue the good work that he started now because someone has to take it forward. He's got momentum, everything has got momentum now, like he's got the massive public support. We picked it up also up on social media. We saw the marches. We saw the people, even Imtiaz Sooliman from Gift of the Givers endorsing him, the Premier from KZN in endorsing him. So, you know, he's... And also he's a person that has got this clean image. You know, he's someone that's not been... He's not there under a cloud. So he's the ideal person and also he's no-nonsense approach. He's maybe the best person to restore...the tainted trust of the public in the police because at the end, according to recent studies, only 27% of the public has got some kind of trust in the police. So he was the ideal person now to turn that ship around for them. And we must also remember that he's a whistleblower now. So they have to...they have to really, whatever they do, and that is why we're so looking forward to the President's speech this afternoon or this evening, because they will have to handle this very carefully, not to really, how can I say it? Yeah, the trust of the public. Whistleblowers, they have to have trust in the system. And if they see that he's a whistleblower and he's not dealt with…Willem Els (13:26.134)…in the right way, that might prohibit future whistleblowers to come to the front. And for him to do what he did, I think it took tremendous, tremendous courage to do that. Him being this disciplined officer that I know, I am sure that he must have followed all due processes, all protocols. He must have discussed it with the Minister because in his interview last week, he indicated that the Minister summoned him to Pretoria and the National Commissioner as well as general Sibiya was in the room and he instructed them to make peace. So the Minister would not instruct him and call him in if he didn't know what was going on here. So that just gives us an indication that everything that he escalated, he escalated to the right place and he might have hit a brick wall and that prompted his actions of last Sunday.Chris Steyn (14:28.831)Now, we've heard a rumour that the Police Minister has asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to be placed on special leave. Do you think that's the way to go about it?Willem Els (14:40.738)I think so. I think the right thing, you know, in a good functioning democracy, that would have happened the first day after allegations came apart. So I think it's the right way. I think it's the right way for General Sibiya to step down or to step aside, you know, until all these investigations are there. Because remember, at the moment, it's all allegations. They've not been found guilty of anything, et cetera, et cetera. It will just, it will be good for their image. It will be good for the transparency of the process if they step aside and to allow the processes, whatever the president is going to announce, that it takes it full course. And then after that, I mean, there will be recommendations. If they found that that Mkhwanazi was correct in what he did, then they should be repercussions.Chris Steyn (15:33.015)What would you like to hear from President Cyril Ramaphosa tonight?Willem Els (15:38.444)Yeah, that's what we do not want to hear. That's the first thing. We do not want them to use the old playbook that the ANC has been using ever since they came to power. Whenever there's a challenge, whenever there's a scandal, we look at various of these scandals, State Capture, we look at the Arms Deal and all of that. Every time they come up with this Commission of Inquiry, it costs us billions of rands and it takes for ages before it comes up with some very...Willem Els (16:06.626)….very sort of vague recommendations that are never implemented. So that is going to hurt the President very much if he does that. So what we would like to see, we believe he would do the right thing, he would appoint an independent judge that is retired, that is not tainted in any way, because remember, he also mentioned the judiciary when he said corruption runs high. So how do you know that the judge, that he's still a serving judge, is not being implicated? Because that will only come out, of course, in the investigation. So the right thing will be to get a retired judge that's got a clean sort of career and image. And then you should give him, I mean, I don't think that should go past 30 days. The urgency of this matter warrants that as soon as possible, as deep as possible, and as transparent as possible, that investigation must come down. It must not wait. Of course, it will be debated in Parliament. They asked for a debate. They said 14 days, all these committees are going to be there. But the problem that we have with those committees now is he also implicated politicians. So many of those politicians must sit on those committees to investigate themselves. So that is a challenge that we have for that, or the problem. But at the end of the day, the Speaker said it will be debated in 14 days. And then of course, they must allow sufficient time for it to be debated. That is what they are there for. That's why they have been elected and that is their duty. But at the end of the day, what we'd like to see is that the outcome of this investigation by this retired judge as we mentioned, that all those recommendations must be implemented. We need action. We don't need a fall guy. In the past, they would select someone to be the fall guy, he will take, or she will take all the blame, and all the other people would just continue as usual. So we don't want, we want repercussions, we want accountability, and at the moment…Willem Els (18:28.058)…what we need is this thing to be cut to the bone. Otherwise, we're just going to continue in five years from now, we're going to have the same discussion.Chris Steyn (18:36.865)That's what I was going to ask you. Do you think this could be the catalyst for change? That this on a political and a policing level?Willem Els (18:45.902)I think it's like a boil that just burst open. And the way, if you just put another plaster on it, it's not going to serve the purpose. What you see on grassroots level, as you indicated on social media as well, the general public is fed up of corruption, fed up of crime. It really affects everyone. So if they detect that there's no seriousness, by the government and by the president to really address this thing, I think there might be some challenges.Chris Steyn (19:20.203)I mean, people are threatening, literally saying white and black were riot together if the KZN in general is not treated right.Willem Els (19:29.87)Exactly. And there was also another discussion that I listened to and they said, you know what, we might see a repeat of 2021 if people feel that they're not being listened to. So we don't want to predict that. We don't want that because it was very criminal. But that is just something that boils over. But very interesting about General Mkhwanazi, if you think back about 2021, you know, when President Zuma was arrested and taken to escort, it was Mkhwanazi wo arrested him. He went there and he had his Task Force members there and they were there to arrest him. So that just indicates to you that this guy, you know, he's straight walking and he's doing the right thing as a policeman in his heart, in his actions. He's a policeman in heart and down to the bone.Chris Steyn (20:25.163)Now, word on the street, some good news is that some drug cartels have already fled the country since the press conference by the general last Sunday.Willem Els (20:36.16)Well, if that is true, I haven't heard that, but that is really good news. You know, South Africa is known as the Southern Route. So, your heroin and now a lot of your methamphetamines and other drugs are also coming. It's coming from mainly Afghanistan, especially the heroin, then to Pakistan. And then there's a very interesting paper that is on the website of the ISS. It's called the Heroin Coast where they went into depth and they investigated the route and what happens is basically that you've got this ancient what they call the Swahili Coast and the trading that's been taking place down the East Coast of Africa for hundreds of years. And now they're exploiting that in order to bring down and to smuggle the heroin down to through Tanzania, Mozambique to South Africa. And here from South Africa, these kingpins, what they do is they...distribute locally, they distribute in Africa, but also up to Europe and to the US.Chris Steyn (21:41.345)Before I let you go, what did you make of the arrests of the Crime Intelligence boss, General Dumisani and the other top police officers?Willem Els (21:52.632)Well, it's been a long way coming. You know, we knew about it before it came to the open. What happened there? The appointment of this lady. Her father has been arrested on different charges already for some time, but it took them almost five, six months in order to arrest him. You know, what we need is swift action. We need swift action and swift justice because South Africa is tired of justice delayed. So we need swift action and we need, we need the government to take the lead in that, in order to restore credibility of the government as a crime-fighting government, because at the end of the day, that is what the people want.Chris Steyn (22:35.839)Indeed. Thank you. was Willem Els, a former police commander who has worked closely with General Mkhwanzi and who is now with the Institute for Security Studies, speaking to BizNews, thank you Willem and I am Chris Steyn.

Willem Els: The Commander who trained Genl. Mkhwanazi to handle bombs…

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