John Matisonn: Is Mkwanazi playing SA for fools? Respected crime expert thinks so.

Key topics:De Haas slams KZN task team for overreach beyond political killingsMkhwanazi alleges syndicate ties in police, judiciary, and prosecutorsDe Haas urges independent inquiry led by retired top judge and experts.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..By John Matisonn.Veteran KwaZulu-Natal violence monitor Mary de Haas – whose research was the basis for setting up the Political Killings Task Team – has rejected KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s claims at his controversial media conference on Sunday morning.De Haas questioned the task team’s methods and said it had veered away from its mandate substantially, into areas it had neither the authority nor the expertise to investigate. “Their mandate was specifically to deal with politically related killings,” she said in an interview with BizNews. “They have done goodness knows what else.”Mkhwanazi claimed that the disbandment of the Political Killings Task Team was orchestrated to shield politically connected members of a criminal syndicate from prosecution.He said some syndicate members were in “the South African Police Service, the metro police and Correctional Services. They include prosecutors in Gauteng province, the judiciary … and all these are controlled by the drug cartel and businesspeople in Gauteng. This act, of course, undermines the criminal justice system in this country.”But De Haas said that the members of the task force were not mandated to do any of these things and were not trained to do them, and said she was aware of reports of malicious arrests, torture, refused bail for petty offences. “Let’s just take what Mkhwanazi said about being asked to investigate a syndicate. There’s nothing new about syndicates in South Africa. We’ve had them since the apartheid days, they’ve just got worse.“The point is that it’s not the mandate of the political killings team to go up to Gauteng and investigate some syndicate organised crime activities. It’s the job of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Hawks.”De Haas also defended Deputy Police Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya, who Mkhwanazi accused of taking the case dockets when the unit was closed down. “Sibiya, as the head of detectives nationally, has the right to demand any dockets,” she said. .Read more:.DA demands SAPS overhaul as Mkhwanazi’s exposé rocks police integrity.Mkhwanazi said the team had investigated more than 600 politically related dockets, arrested 436 suspects, and recovered 156 firearms, with at least 55 of them linked to political crimes. More than 100 were convicted and given prison sentences.But De Haas questioned this claim and said she was not aware of records confirming them.She called for a new independent inquiry different from the Zondo Commission. “We need a very small team, preferably under a retired Constitutional Court judge of impeccable credentials with a history of acting with probity.” The judge should be assisted by very experienced, competent, maybe retired prosecutors or advocates.Ramaphosa, who was in Brazil when Mkhwanazi held his bombshell media conference, will address the nation on Sunday at 7pm to explain what action he will take.

John Matisonn: Is Mkwanazi playing SA for fools? Respected crime expert thinks so.

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