Masemola says disbanding of Political Killings Task Team was ‘a devastating shock’

By Johnathan Paoli

National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola has told Parliament that he was blindsided and deeply unsettled by Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s directive to abruptly disband the country’s most successful political killings task team late last year.

Testifying before Parliament’s ad hoc committee probing corruption in the criminal justice system, Masemola said he only learnt of the instruction on 31 December last year, while on annual leave, and was never given any coherent explanation for the move.

“When I read it, it was a shock and a surprise. The question came up: why? It was just a devastating way of doing things,” Masemola told evidence leader Norman Arendse.

The Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) was established in 2017 after a surge in political assassinations in KwaZulu-Natal.

Then police minister Fikile Mbalula had travelled with Masemola, then a deputy commissioner, from Durban to Cape Town in what Masemola recalled