Solly Moeng: One-party rule can't Police itself — SA must redesign its institutions

The Madlanga Commission has confirmed what South Africans long suspected: three decades of one-party political dominance have hollowed out accountability. Its two interim reports have triggered disciplinary and criminal referrals against senior police officials and a political fixer — yet Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, President Ramaphosa's ally, remains untouched. Political analyst and columnist Solly Moeng argues the problem isn't one minister but the presidency's unchecked power to appoint commissions, direct intelligence services and decide colleagues' fates. His fix: constitutionally separate the president and deputy by party, insulate intelligence oversight from factional capture, and treat coalition government as the cure for one-party thinking, not its complication..By Solly Moeng*.A Commission That Confirms an Old DiagnosisEvery few years, South Africa produces a commission of inquiry that tells us, in forensic detail, what we already suspected: that when one party controls every lever of the state for three decades, accountability becomes optional and loyalty becomes currency. The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System is the latest, and most damning, instalment of that story.We now know that President Cyril Ramaphosa established the commission in July 2025 after KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's explosive allegations that then Police Minister Senzo Mchunu had improperly disbanded the Political Killings Task Team to shield politically connected individuals, and that a network of officials and fixers, including Vusimuzi "Cat" Matlala and Brown Mogotsi, had infiltrated the police and intelligence services. Mchunu was placed on special leave (polite expression for “suspended”) with immediate effect, and Professor Firoz Cachalia was appointed acting minister.More than a year later, the pattern that should worry every South African is not just what the commission has uncovered, but what the president has failed to do about it. The commission's second interim report, released in August 2026, confirmed prima facie evidence against senior officials and recommended disciplinary and criminal proceedings against Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya, an officer known as "Witness G", Sergeant Fannie Nkosi, and political fixer Brown Mogotsi. Until recently, Mchunu's name had remained conspicuously absent from that list of consequences, even as pressure mounts on the president to decide his fate.Ramaphosa's own explanation - that he will act only once the commission concludes, insisting "we don't just skop and donner"- is the language of due process. But due process for everyone else in the interim report has already produced referrals for discipline and prosecution. Only the minister who sits closest to the president, an ANC comrade rather than an outsider, remains untouched, prompting open accusations that Ramaphosa is protecting Mchunu. A separate High Court affidavit by the suspended Inspector-General of Intelligence, Imtiaz Fazel, has since alleged that Mchunu's office was central to a series of investigations and leaks that fed directly into the commission and to Fazel's own irregular suspension - evidence that the rot reaches beyond one disbanded task team into the machinery meant to oversee South Africa’s spies.This is not really a story about one minister. It is a story about what happens when a single political clique has governed uninterrupted for so long that its own leader cannot discipline its own members without triggering a factional crisis. That is the toxicity of one-party dominance: not that one party is inherently corrupt, but that unbroken incumbency erodes the willingness - and eventually the capacity - of any leader to hold their closest allies to the same standard as everyone else.The Perils of an Overpowered PresidencyOur system's central design flaw is that it hands one office - the presidency - unilateral authority to establish and brief commissions of inquiry, to appoint and direct the intelligence services, and to determine the fate of ministers implicated in exactly the kind of wrongdoing those commissions uncover. Ramaphosa is, in effect, being asked to judge his own political family, using powers that were concentrated in his office precisely because we never designed accountability to be shared.Reducing presidential power over commissions of inquiry, appointments to the security cluster, and oversight of intelligence services would not weaken the state. It would depersonalise decisions that are currently far too personal. No single individual, however well-intentioned, should have to choose between protecting a colleague and protecting the republic. The system should make that choice for them, in advance, through law and institutional design. This is an important discussion that South Africa must have, before a person and clique far worse than Ramaphosa and the ANC enter the presidency.A President and Deputy From Different PartiesIn an era of coalition governance, launched by the 2024 Government of National Unity, we should go further than merely trimming presidential power. I propose that the president and deputy president be required, by constitutional amendment, to come from different political parties. This single change would do more to entrench genuine power-sharing than any number of coalition agreements negotiated behind closed doors after an election.An alternative arrangement – perhaps even better - could be the direct election of a non-partisan president accountable only to the Constitution and the people, as Head of State, and a Prime Mister elected through the proportional system as Head/Leader of Government accountable to Parliament.In the former system, a cross-party presidency and deputy presidency would force the executive's two most senior offices to check one another daily, not just during cabinet reshuffles. It would make it structurally harder for any one party's internal factional battles - of the kind now playing out over Mchunu - to be quietly absorbed and shielded by the state. It would also normalise what Switzerland has practised for generations through its seven-member Federal Council: government as a standing negotiation between parties, not a throne occupied by whichever faction wins the most seats.Intelligence Services That Serve the Republic, Not the FactionNowhere is redesign more urgent than in the intelligence and security services. The Madlanga Commission and the Fazel affidavit together describe crime intelligence and policing structures allegedly weaponised to protect politically connected figures and to punish officials, like Mkhwanazi and Fazel, who spoke out. An intelligence apparatus that can be redirected by whoever controls the ruling party's top structures, rather than by the Constitution, is a standing invitation to state capture, under any party's banner.We need statutory and constitutional safeguards that insulate appointments, budgets, and oversight of the intelligence services from the governing coalition of the day - multi-party parliamentary oversight with real teeth, fixed and protected terms for the Inspector-General of Intelligence, and criminal sanction for political interference in operational matters. These services must answer to the Republic and the Constitution, irrespective of which clique currently holds the presidency.Coalition Politics as the Cure, Not the ComplicationSceptics will say coalition governance is precisely what has produced the current paralysis - a president unwilling to move against an ally for fear of destabilising an already fragile ANC. I read it differently. The paralysis we are watching is not a coalition problem; it is the last gasp of a one-party mindset operating inside a coalition body. The problem is that Ramaphosa still behaves as though his primary constituency is his party's internal balance of power, rather than the multi-party government he nominally leads.The more genuinely we entrench coalition governance - through electoral reform, a cross-party executive, and depersonalised presidential power - the harder it becomes for any single faction to protect its own indefinitely. Coalitions with teeth, not coalitions of convenience, are our best insurance against the kind of institutional capture the Madlanga Commission has spent more than a year excavating.A Compact Worth RenewingSouth Africa's constitutional ideals of 1994 remain intact but politically frayed. Renewing them means returning to first principles: balance, shared power, and institutions that outlast any one leader's loyalties. Amending the Electoral Act for constituency-based accountability, reshaping the presidency into a coordinating rather than commanding office, requiring a cross-party executive, and firewalling the intelligence services from factional capture. I am convinced that these are not abstract ideals. They are the direct, practical answers to what the Madlanga Commission has shown us: that unbroken power, in anyone's hands, eventually protects itself before it protects the country. It is time we built a system that no longer lets it..Read more:.Brig Fanie Bouwer: Madlanga Commission - Don't pull the plug.If the political parties that are already entrenched in the current system cannot spearhead the needed institutional changes, civil society formations must come together to demand them..*Solly Moeng: Reputation Strategist.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.

Solly Moeng: One-party rule can't Police itself — SA must redesign its institutions

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