Mkhwanazi vs… Ramaphosa?

How factional alignments explain reactions to Mkhwanazi’s SAPS corruption bombshell, and how the DA can benefit

On Sunday, Lieutenant-General Mkhwanazi held a spectacular press briefing, alleging a Gauteng-based government-embedded criminal syndicate across public, private and criminal sectors, and across all three branches and all three spheres of government.

While most have been happy to see his pugnacious attitude, the President has not been, and ultimately this scandal may favour Paul Mashatile. In the meantime, opposition parties have been quick to get behind the popular Mkhwanazi, which may soon become a source of tension between the ANC and DA.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this event could be fairly significant, even if nothing major develops in the short term, and even if no arrests come of it, because it marks an increase in the stakes in factional competition.

The Briefing

Mkhwanazi tells the story by outlining how his Political Killings Task Team was dismissed for poking about too close to powerful individuals.

When a shooting incident in April 2024 took out an employee of a Transnet service provider in Gauteng, detectives arrested three suspects, including a SAPS warrant officer. This drew in members of the now-six year old Political Killings Task Team.

This team was formed following the assassination of former ANC ward councillor Musawenkosi Mchunu (no relation of the Minister) in 2018 in KwaZulu-Natal. Ramaphosa established an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), comprising police, prosecution, intelligence, and correctional services, and the IMC formed the Task Team. Mkhwanazi later oversaw its operations in KZN, investigating 612 assassination-related case dockets, and securing convictions for 128 accused across 106 cases, including other policemen.

When the task team was drawn in in September, Brown Mogotsi, a politically connected intermediary, sent Mkhwanazi WhatsApp messages containing classified police documents (e.g., a police letter, occurrence book, and a Crime Intelligence presentation). Mogotsi warned Mkhwanazi of a plot to charge him, referencing a briefing by Lieutenant General Khan and indicated that Minister Senzo Mchunu was informed.

By December, the task team had arrested Katiso Molefe for Swart’s murder. During the arrest, there was an abortive attempts by some SAPS officers to scupper the operation. Ballistics linked the firearms to multiple high-profile murders, including those of AKA in 2021, amplifying the investigation’s significance.

The very next day, new years’ eve, Minister Mchunu then issued a letter to Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola, ordering the task team’s disbandment and suspending Crime Intelligence vacancy fillings. Mchunu argued the team was unnecessary and added no value to policing in KwaZulu-Natal.

On New Year’s Day, Brown Mogotsi informed Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, a businessman with a R360 million SAPS contract, via WhatsApp that the task team was dissolved and dockets were being sent to SAPS head office. Mogotsi arranged a meeting between Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya and Minister Mchunu to find “solutions” to investigations. The following day, Matlala sent Mogotsi proof of payments for an ANC event and travel costs, indicating financial support for Mchunu and Mogotsi’s political activities. Mogotsi forwarded Matlala the disbandment letter.

Over the next couple of months, Sibiya, acting on Mchunu’s instructions, withdrew 121 case dockets from the task team to his office in Pretoria without approval from Masemola or Mkhwanazi. These dockets, including five with arrest instructions, remained uninvestigated.

While Mchunu denied knowing Mogotsi during a March 5^th parliamentary portfolio committee meeting, he confirmed in a recorded call posted on X on the 30th that Mogotsi was a “comrade from the Northwest”.

Matlala’s SAPS contract was terminated two weeks later, and the next day, the task team arrested him for three counts of attempted murder, and other charges. This lead to Matlala lashing out at Mogotsi, accusing him of unfulfilled promises and threatening media exposure and legal action. His phone revealed communications with Mogotsi and Mchunu.

Fallout

For a start, it’s not looking good for Mchunu. Mkhwanazi is immensely popular at the moment, and he has a great deal of credibility across class, party and colour lines. Ramaphosa’s response looks measured on the surface, but they make clear which side he falls on:

“This is a matter of grave national security concern that is receiving the highest priority attention. It is vital that the integrity of the country’s security services is safeguarded and that the rule of law is affirmed.” “All parties to this matter are called upon to exercise discipline and restraint. The trading of accusations and counter-accusations threatens to undermine public confidence and sow confusion. Furthermore, these actions damage the unity and focus of the police.”

The EFF and MK have both enthusiastically capitalised on this situation, as most of the public generally respect Mkhwanazi for sticking his neck out.

The DA’s reaction is both boring and interesting at the same time. Boring, because Ian Cameron (chair of Parliament’s police portfolio committee) said all the right and sensible things. Interesting, because only Cameron has said anything at all.

I only highlight this because my gut feel here is that Cameron was deliberately getting ahead of the weather and staking the party’s position behind Mkhwanazi before the leadership could prevaricate. I know Cameron, to be an admirably singleminded individual who cares rather little for partisan or ideological projects, and just wants to do his job (hard to believe, but such people do exist).

On behalf of the DA, he has demanded:

1. Launch an independent commission of inquiry into SAPS corruption and criminal infiltration.

2. Freeze and independently review all dockets tied to implicated officers.

3. Conduct lifestyle and skills audits, and re‑vet all senior officers.

4. Reform and rebuild Crime Intelligence from the ground up.

5. Adequately resource IPID to ensure corrupt officers face consequences.

6. Shift to prosecution‑led investigations and intelligence‑driven policing.”

This is all great, and I can’t really fault it. In his interview with BizNews, Cameron said he found the accusations credible, and acknowledged Mkhwanazi’s disciplined reputation. He urged due process over media trials, and proposing an urgent parliamentary debate and an investigation. He criticized Mchunu Ramaphosa, and National Commissioner Fannie Masemola for the quality of policing in general.

Very sound, very mature, very focused. But the other side have not been looking quite so stable.

Faultlines

The broad strokes of the leadership competition between Ramaphosa and his deputy Paul Mashatile are that Ramaphosa is attempting to broker peace between capital and state to stabilise the centre, whereas Mashatile sees the risk of the taint of WMC collusion which dogs Ramaphosa in the party and the radical factions, and wishes to broker peace with the exiled factions of the movement in the EFF and MK.

No ANC president has lasted for two terms, and it is generally regarded as a given that the deputy president succeeds the president once they are elected party leader. Most political commentators worry about losing Ramaphosa in 2027, because it might mean the end of the DA’s time in the GNU.

In order to bolster his credibility recently, Mashatile stepped out of line to take the lead in declaring the “reconfiguring” of the GNU. He has also claimed an assassination attempt on him. Fannie Masemola backed up Mashatile’s flimsy story, though others in the party were quick to rubbish it.

Two things can be said of Police Minister Senzo Mchunu in this regard – he is unambiguously a Ramaphosa guy, and he is extremely dangerous. In 2016, he was forced by Jacob Zuma to stand aside in an internal leadership dispute for control of KZN, in which several assassinations were carried out on both sides, and allegations of vote rigging were tossed about.

The first major commentator to take the president’s side was Paul O’Sullivan, who has given some colourful interviews. O’Sullivan is a former cop and a private investigator at a very high level, and has had a close personal relationship with Ramaphosa since 1993, and O’Sullivan even helped train Ramaphosa as a police reservist for a media stunt while Cyril was head of the National Empowerment Consortium (and the Times Media Group, as it happens). O’Sullivan also did the background checks into Kehla Sithole before he was made police commissioner before Masemole, and his involvement in high politics is fairly long-standing. O’Sullivan was implicated in the Phala Phala scandal, and strenuously defended the President at the time, claiming he was framed.

O’Sullivan pointed to past events to question Mkhwanazi’s integrity, and rubbished all allegations, stating emphatically that Mkhwanazi was a “criminal”, and needed to “fall”.

O’Sullivan brought up two stories about the Lieutenant-General to undermine his credibility. While Mkhwanazi was acting national commissioner in 2012, he allegedly approved an unlawful expenditure of R35 million by Fannie Masemola (then acting head of Crime Intelligence, now national commissioner) on luxury cars, funded through public money or Crime Intelligence slush funds. Then in 2020, Mkhwanazi and Masemola allegedly accepted Louis Vuitton handbags (valued between R70,000 and R100,000 each) as gifts from a police supplier during an overseas trip. Neither declared these at customs, and O’Sullivan speculated they may have given them to their wives.

This may well be true (we are in South Africa after all), but let’s put that aside for now. The big point is that it places Masemola and Mkhwenazi into the same faction, and places O’Sullivan into the opposite faction. He has called for Mkhwenazi to be dismissed, and called the allegations against Mchunu baseless.

It is interesting to note which branch of the government each person trusts. Cameron has insisted that the commission be an ad-hoc Parliamentary oversight committee. This is much like those which first examined the Mbeki arms deal scandal under Andrew Feinstein before he was shut down and parliament’s oversight capacity was more or less castrated. Parliament if the only branch where the DA have pull.

O’Sullivan demanded a judicial commission of inquiry into the police service and the suspension of both Mkhwanazi and Masemola pending investigation into their conduct. Ramaphosa has both executive power and judicial pull, having gotten rid of the biggest judicial opponent, South Africa’s first impeached Judge John Hlophe, now of the MK.

Dry grass

Clearly, Mkhwanazi is at risk doing what he’s doing, and his show of muscle and confidence was not from nowhere. The pageantry of the tactical uniforms was remarked on by Paul O’Sullivan in an interview on Newzroom Afrika – he called the use of tactical uniforms a “show of force,” likening it to a potential coup attempt, and waffled about cost to taxpayers.

As odd as it may look, what Mkhwanazi is doing makes sense. It is to demonstrate that he has the capacity and intent to protect himself with his and his loyal subordinates’ own force. There is no arm of the state he can trust to protect him as a whistleblower. He must provide for his own security, by playing the games of high power: forming factional alliances and implicit threats, flexing the capacity for organised violence.

But the hysterical remark about a “coup” from O’Sullivan, as unrealistic as it is, belie the fact that this is, in fact, a challenge to the authority of the President and the heads of the security cluster. That is a meaningful escalation, one not seen since 2001, and while it is only implied for now, the possibility of some kind of fallout can’t be ruled out.

But this problem may take a while to fester.

Ramaphosa is facing a ridiculously hard dilemma here - if he gets rid of Mchunu (as he morally should), he will be fuelling the process of displacing his support. If he doesn’t, he will look complicit, and Mashatile can pretend to be the clean candidate in 2027.

If Mkhwanaziis an honest player (which he may well be), he becomes a serious popular political challenger who cannot be contained by anyone, and if Mashatile can stay out of hs way and feed him rival meat, he may stay on long enough to take him out later (likely together with masemola, if O’Sullivan’s accusations are true).

In the mean time, I will be keeping an eye on the DA, and how they manage things – having shown no spine so far, I imagine Cameron’s pressure on the President’s men may get them somewhat hot under the collar.

But if they want to play for keeps, this is just the sort of ammunition they need to negotiate for actual policy changes.