Western Cape Hawks boss appointed as acting Crime Intelligence commissioner
There's been a change in the leadership of the Crime Intelligence division, with the appointment of Major General Mathipa Solomon Makgato as acting divisional commissioner of Crime Intelligence.
This follows the arrest of the division's commissioner, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, last month on charges of fraud and corruption relating to the appointment of an unqualified civilian in a senior post within the SAPS. Before Khumalo's arrest on 26 June, the South African Police Service (SAPS) had warned that Khumalo was being targeted for cleaning up Crime Intelligence.
According to the SAPS, the targeting involved ' fake news ' and accusations that Khumalo was appointing people aligned with him.
Khumalo had been head of the unit since December 2022.
Makgato was the head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (also known as the Hawks) in the Western Cape.
National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola announced Makgato's appointment at a press conference on Wednesday, 9 July.
'He brings to this position a wealth of experience and knowledge in the intelligence and detective space, with 36 years' service in both environments in SAPS. He holds a BTech degree in Policing as well as a National Diploma in Police Administration.
'We have full confidence in Major General Mokgato and we trust that his leadership will enhance sufficiency and maintain stability within crime intelligence,' said Masemola.
Masemola said that Khumalo, along with the other six Crime Intelligence officers who were arrested last month, had been temporarily moved from the unit.
'Following the arrest of the Divisional Commissioner of Crime Intelligence, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, and six others, on Thursday, 26 June … the human resource division of the SAPS has processed the matter in line with the SAPS disciplinary regulations of 2016.
'All seven senior officers have been temporarily transferred out of the division of Crime Intelligence, pending more information which we have requested from Idac [Investigating Directorate Against Corruption], that will indicate to us as to what further course of action we can take,' said Masemola.
'Highly politicised and secretive'
Underpinning Masemola's announcements were the remarkable revelations of KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi on Sunday, which exposed serious divisions in South Africa's law-enforcing arena.
Mkhwanazi inferred that the Crime Intelligence arrests had been intentionally driven by individuals keen to see the unit implode.
The head of Justice and Violence Prevention at the Institute for Security Studies, Gareth Newham, told Daily Maverick the Crime Intelligence unit had become ' highly politicised ', largely because of its secretive nature and 'the vast resources' at its disposal.
'There's hard evidence, over many years, that that agency has largely been seen as a tool to support political agendas as opposed to actually tackling organised crime, and because of that, it hasn't been providing necessary intelligence to a range of different structures.
'Crime Intelligence has played an active and destabilising role in politics and policing for a long time,' he said.
The division itself, Newham said, was very large, with an annual budget of nearly R4-billion.
'It operates with high levels of secrecy, and doesn't even report to the police portfolio committee [in Parliament] — it reports to the Standing Committee on Intelligence, whose meetings are closed and who hardly ever releases reports,' he said.
Newham said what was needed to address the challenges in the Crime Intelligence area was a high-level review panel, similar to the one that was set up in 2018 and headed by former safety and security minister Sydney Mufamadi, to probe the organisational integrity of the State Security Agency.
'You would need quite a strong and well-protected structure, that has the necessary clearance and expertise, to do a deep, thorough drive over a period of time to find out exactly what it is doing and how those resources are being used, and then to make recommendations about whether we need such a single, massive, unaccountable division, or whether a large part of that should be decentralised to specific components,' he said.
Newham said that, in an acting role, Makgato was essentially in the position to provide 'some kind of leadership stability'.
'It's highly unlikely that any one person can make much of a difference,' he said. DM
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