By Johnathan Paoli
Suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has told the Madlanga Commission that the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) would have been dissolved as early as March 2024 if SAPS management had implemented a 2019 restructuring plan.
Testifying on Tuesday, Mchunu said National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola briefed him on 1 December 2024 that the PKTT had never been a formal SAPS unit, but an interim task team created years earlier without long-term structural integration.
He insisted that disbanding the PKTT was not a unilateral or rogue act, but the continuation of a process initiated in 2019 under then-national commissioner Khehla Sitole.
According to Mchunu, a 2019 work study—signed off by Sitole—absorbed the PKTT’s functions into a broader Murder and Robbery Unit whose mandate expressly included political killings.
An implementation letter authorising this restructuring was issued in November 2019, but SAPS “failed to act for years”.
When SAPS
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