How South Africa’s underworld infiltrated its government

As world leaders converge on Johannesburg for the G20 summit, a rather more gripping, gruesome spectacle has been unfolding in a nondescript auditorium in the nearby South African city of Pretoria.

Day after day since September, police, whistleblowers and officials have appeared before a public inquiry — televised to the nation — to relate a litany of contract killings and kidnappings that has electrified a country that thought it was inured to such revelations.

The commission, ordered by President Cyril Ramaphosa and presided over by retired judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga, has been tasked with uncovering “criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system”.

The result has been an airing of South Africa’s dirtiest linen and evidence of what many have long suspected: that cadres of the ruling African National Congress have not only failed to rein in organised crime but, in some instances, may have provided cover for notorious underworld figures.

“What has been revealed at these commissions is an indictment of the state of South Africa’s rule of law,” said Lizette Lancaster, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies. “Criminal syndicates infiltrate the police and prosecution services, feeling secure that they can bribe their way through the justice system.”

The inquiry was triggered when Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, a police commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal province, held a sensational press conference in July accusing police minister Senzo Mchunu — a prominent ally of Ramaphosa — of sabotaging investigations into political killings.

The testimony, often worthy of a television soap opera, has revealed how some police frequently intimidated or threatened colleagues to drop investigations into well-connected figures.

One in particular, Vusumuzi “Cat” Matlala, has captured public attention.

Known in South Africa as a “tenderpreneur” who won government contracts through his political connections, Matlala was this year charged with organising a botched hit on his ex-girlfriend, actress Tebogo Thobejane.

He is also implicated in the alleged swindling of a state hospital out of R2bn ($116mn), according to a report from a state anti-corruption unit, all in a country where public healthcare is in a state of crisis.

Matlala allegedly enjoyed close ties to several senior police officers. So co-operative were they that they allegedly fitted blue lights to Matlala’s cars, according to testimony given to Madlanga, which allowed him to pass them off as official vehicles.

Last week, police spokesperson Kelebogile Thepa broke down in tears as she recounted how she was twice hijacked by armed thugs after being told to “back off” from issuing statements around Matlala. “They wanted to burn me in the car,” she said.

Another witness, testifying remotely and only known as “Witness C”, claimed Matlala had even paid R500,000 towards Mchunu’s campaign for the ANC presidency.

Matlala denies all the allegations against him, describing Mkhwanazi’s claims as “wild, fanciful and unfounded”. Mchunu, the former police minister who was suspended, also denies the allegations, saying he never met Matlala.

But the fallout continues to spread, with a number of other police officers since suspended.

In a sordid twist, South Africa’s ambassador to France — another former police minister accused of covering up corruption, who was due to testify to Madlanga — was in September found dead after falling from a hotel. Police were investigating his death as a possible suicide.

Mmusi Maimane, who leads the Build One South Africa party, which shares power with the ANC in the coalition government, said the inquiry showed that government had failed to tackle the nexus between rogue officials, police and criminals.

“There’s been a huge focus on fixing South Africa’s power crisis in the past few years,” he said, referring to the blackouts that until recently regularly plunged large parts of the country into darkness. “But the one thing the government just can’t get a handle on is crime.”

Last week, an organised crime index released by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime ranked South Africa as the seventh worst of 193 countries. The latest statistics put its homicide rate at about 45 murders per 100,000 people, one of the world’s highest.

Firoz Cachalia, South Africa’s acting minister of police, said the inquiry provided the opportunity for a “reset” of the country’s approach to law enforcement.

Madlanga’s commission — which comes three years after an inquiry into “state capture” under former president Jacob Zuma that shocked the country — has six months to finish its work. It will recommend reforms to Ramaphosa, as well as who should be prosecuted or disciplined for being complicit in criminality.

“Ventilating these issues in an inquiry is the right way for a democratic society to address a serious problem,” Cachalia, a one-time law lecturer and former ANC member who stepped into the role after Mchunu was suspended, told the Financial Times.

“The warning signs were there for years . . . but as a country, we didn’t tell ourselves the whole truth and didn’t respond effectively.”

Lancaster at the ISS said poverty, a tolerance for violence dating back to apartheid and the world’s most yawning inequality gap had all contributed. Weak policing and prosecution had added a sense of impunity in a country where only about one in 10 murders is solved.

Crime was a central discussion point in the Oval Office when US President Donald Trump — whose administration has boycotted the G20 — met Ramaphosa in May.

Trump falsely accused South Africa of allowing a genocide against white farmers. The truth, as several South Africans present in the Oval Office pointed out, was that violence was omnipresent. “The crime is terrible . . . but it is across the board,” Johann Rupert, chair of luxury goods company Richemont, told Trump.

For Maimane, an overhaul of criminal justice cannot come quickly enough.

For years, he said, state institutions were repurposed as vehicles for personal patronage. Instead of enforcing the law, many police saw their job as protecting politicians, fuelling a view that political connections were a hedge against prosecution.

“This has created an accountability-free culture,” Maimane said. “That is at the heart of what we need to fix.”