Four years ago this week, South Africa was burning, the state apparatus caught so unawares that our nation’s finest could only look on haplessly as businesses were looted and torched, with some 354 people losing their lives in the bedlam.
Bheki Cele, the cowboyish minister minister of police who’d popularized the buddy cop injunction of ‘shoot to kill’, seemed out of his depth when appearing on TV to deliver emasculated updates on the orgy of looting teleported in real time into our living rooms.
The visuals were apocalyptic: marauders setting fire to buildings, helping themselves to whatever they could grab, and even butchering others. And, in an unmistakable indication that there was something wrong with the SAPS, the taxi industry – itself riven with violence — was helping the ‘tired’ police force. TV footage showed them doing much of the dispersing, chasing and shooting.
The trigger? Just days before, former president Jacob Zuma was arrested for contempt of court after refusing to appear before the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. There were tense scenes at his Nkandla homestead: supporters brandished weapons at the gate, and his son Edward vowed his father would be taken to prison ‘over his dead body’. ‘Mayikhale’ was a battle cry raging on the socials.
Both Cele and his commissioner, General Khehla Sitole, were dithering, and both wrote to the Constitutional Court to ask whether they should go ahead with the arrest even though they’d been clearly directed to do so.
That is to say, by the time uBaba was spirited off to the Estcourt Correctional Centre, there were abundant red flags of an imminent uprising. As Cele put it during a recent interview: Zuma’s arrest was ‘was coming with trouble. You [could] see that if he goes to his incarceration, there was going to be a problem.’
Former police minister Bheki Cele recounts the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma. Video: YouTube.
These were among a number of revealing remarks made by Cele during an appearance on the SMWX podcast that was broadcast on on 14 May. In an interview with Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, he spoke candidly about his controversial time in office, including the July 2021 unrest, as well as ongoing tensions within the service.
Indeed, Cele revealed that he had received sufficient intelligence that something was brewing. As a result, he approached both Cyril Ramaphosa and then acting ANC secretary-general Jesse Duarte, asking them for permission to plead with Zuma to at least appear before the commission. This three-and-a-half hour long meeting with Zuma spawned rumours about Cele supposedly having tea with the former president instead of putting cuffs on him.
KwaZulu-Natal, said Cele, had always been a tribal province centred on the Zulu king, the late Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and Jacob Zuma. Revealingly, he also admitted to not having had a good relationship with his commissioner, General Khehla Sitole, in the lead-up to the 2021 riots.
His first order of duty during the bedlam was to move much of his operations to KZN, but he was soon ‘grounded’ due to contracting Covid. However, on the third day, he cut his quarantine when he visited Alexandra township north of Johannesburg.
Although quick to praise the efforts of his forces in this Soweto township, one recalls that this was where Nhlanhla Lux, hitherto an obscure figure, rose to national prominence. In military fatigues, he and his entourage captured people’s hearts when they stood before the cameras, seemingly the last line of defence against the looting of Maponya Mall.
In his interview, Cele again sang the praises of the SAPS, but conceded that mistakes were made, and that the hardest hit were township businesses which the cops could not save. Some of them have never recovered.
Cele’s interview has gained relevance in light of the bombshell allegations by KZN police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi about the police, intelligence service and even the judiciary being infiltrated by a criminal syndicate, which have resulted in police minister Senzo Mchunu being placed on special leave.
These allegations have triggered a storm of controversy, and revived questions around the integrity of the SAPS and its capacity to deal with persistent serious crime and large-scale threats in particular. For his part, Cele spoke highly of Mkhwanazi, describing him as ‘one of the top special task force guys. … A real cop. …’
Evidence shows, however, that during the July riots, Mkhwanazi was something of a maverick. When looters were gathering outside a certain shopping centre in Westville, he broke the rules by sending in a special task force, the last line ‘when the chips are down’.
The integrity or otherwise of the SAPS remains a burning issue. In a ten year survey (1990 – 2000) by the UN Office on Drugs and crime, SA took second and first place per capita for assault and rape out of 60 other countries. Murder rates have increased consistently over the past five years. Indeed, we remain one of the most murderous societies outside formal war zones in the world.
Cele himself lamented how the service had regressed since his earlier stint as national commissioner, with certain units being disbanded and the number of officers decreasing even though the crime figures and population were growing.
Given all of this, it should come as no surprise that, according to a survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, public confidence in the SAPS has declined steadily since 1998, showing pronounced dips in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre and the July riots. This might explain the proliferation of commandos on farms, community policing forums and, sadly, growing vigilantism in Western Cape townships.
There may be a storm of debate around both Mkhwanazi’s safety as well as Mchunu’s leave, but the deeper question remains: can the police service be truly cleansed of its long-standing demons? Without a sound, effective and reliable police force, efforts to normalise South African society and create a foundation for sustainable growth will not get very far.
FEATURED IMAGE: Then Police Minister Bheki Cele at a media briefing, 19 March 2018. (GCIS on Flickr)
I am confused: “this Soweto township” appears to refer to Alexandra, which is not in Soweto.
Other than that, a good article. It made me regard old cowboy-hat a little more kindly. As to the merits of the President and the commission, the President is both correct and wrong:
Mandela and Sisulu, as lawyers, would have instinctively
1) reinstated the case dockets, and
2) personally confronted and assessed the person who removed them, possibly firing that person on the merits of that encounter.
That would be actually “doing” something: nobody would, nor could, complain. It’s what presidents are for.
Instead, the president is seen as doing nothing, but is actually far worse. He is saying “Let the wrecked justice system fix the justice system”, and that is tragically sub-par thinking, and may end his tenure.
What should also be done, starting yesterday, is to capture every existing docket onto the cloud, where even Assange- or Snowden-style hackers would struggle to get at them. That would be “doing something”. I once led a team that captured a union membership of sixty thousand A4 forms in four days and nights. It is dead easy technology, that every second unemployed youth can do in a heartbeat of training. Half of my data capture team were out-of-work dancers. It was like working with cute cheerleaders (somebody had to do it).
Sadly, attempts at digitisation or IT by the government (not SARS: it is Treasury, not government) have flopped (e-Tolls, Home Affairs, e-Natis, driving licences, public health) as did every pre-1994 labour union membership database. Torch Commando maintained a database of 250,000 members in “snail-mail” days. Eish.
A paper justice system makes no sense. There is plenty of talent out there to correct this, very quickly. SARS has conquered its digitisation problems. It would likewise be simple to put dockets on a blockchain, such that removing any single one would invite investigation, within milliseconds.
Come on now! It is simple. Not easy, but simple.
This is an excellent and insightful piece of writing PM .I enjoyed reading your opinion piece.