By Johnathan Paoli
The disbandment of KwaZulu-Natal’s Political Killings Task Team dominated proceedings at the Madlanga Commission, exposing not just a contested decision but a deeper struggle over power, legality and control inside South Africa’s criminal justice system.
What began as an administrative move has, through weeks of testimony, come to symbolise a system strained by political interference, fractured command structures and the steady erosion of accountability.
Witness after witness has returned to the same central question: who, precisely, had the authority to dismantle a unit tasked with investigating some of the country’s most sensitive murders? And what does it mean when that authority is exercised — or assumed — outside constitutional bounds?
That legal line was drawn most definitively by SAPS Legal Services head Major-General Petronella van Rooyen.
Her testimony stripped the controversy of political euphemism and placed it squarely in constitutional terms.
Former police minister Senzo Mchunu, she told the commission, did not have the power to disband the PKTT. Operational control of the police, she stressed, rests solely with the National Police Commissioner under Section 207 of the Constitution.
Ministerial oversight, she said, is limited to policy direction and cannot extend to dissolving investigative structures.
Any executive consultation or political backing, Van Rooyen added, does not override constitutional boundaries.
Her evidence confronted the mechanics of how the task team was undone.
Van Rooyen criticised the removal of sensitive PKTT dockets from KwaZulu-Natal to SAPS headquarters, saying Deputy National Police Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya had no authority to order such transfers without the involvement of the provincial commissioner.
Those actions, she said, did not merely bend procedure, they undermined command structures and operational integrity at a moment when clarity and discipline were most needed.
If Van Rooyen outlined the constitutional breach, Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo placed the PKTT’s collapse within a far darker narrative, one of criminal infiltration and institutional capture.
His testimony suggested that the task team’s fate cannot be understood in isolation from the forces arrayed against it.
Khumalo described a powerful criminal syndicate known as the “Big Five”, allegedly involved in drugs, extortion, hijackings, human trafficking and tender fraud, which he said had embedded itself within state institutions.
According to Khumalo, intermediaries were used to influence SAPS operations and obstruct investigations, including those conducted by the PKTT, which he previously led.
The closure of the task team, he testified, significantly hampered probes into politically linked killings, shielding criminal interests from scrutiny. He also described leadership conflicts within Crime Intelligence that left provinces without clear command — structural weaknesses, he said, that syndicates were quick to exploit.
The consequences of dismantling the PKTT were laid bare in detail by Major-General Mary Motsepe, head of SAPS Serious and Violent Crime Investigations.
Her testimony moved the discussion from principle to practice.
In March, she told the commission, she learned through a phone call, not a formal directive, that 121 PKTT murder dockets had been transferred to Pretoria. Once moved, the files lay untouched for nearly two months.
When Motsepe was formally assigned oversight in May, she encountered investigations in disarray: suspects who had not been arrested, prosecutorial instructions that had gone ignored, missing witness statements and unexecuted warrants.
Budget constraints further delayed arrests.
The timing of the PKTT’s disbandment, she said, was particularly damaging, coming amid heightened political violence ahead of elections, without proper consultation, planning or resources.
From the prosecutorial side, KwaZulu-Natal Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Elaine Harrison described an institution blindsided.
She testified that she first learned of the PKTT’s disbandment through social media in January 2025 and received no formal notification. Prosecutors had been embedded within the task team, she said, precisely to ensure prosecution-led investigations, and the unit was beginning to deliver results.
Its sudden disruption, including the removal of the dockets from the province, delayed cases and deepened the anguish of victims’ families.
Harrison warned that uncertainty surrounding the PKTT weakened the state’s capacity to confront political violence and threatened justice outcomes ahead of future elections.
The disbandment process itself was described by Acting Deputy National Commissioner for Crime Detection Lieutenant-General Hilda Senthumule as “business unusual”.
Her account reinforced a pattern of informality and pressure: absent written instructions, unclear lines of authority and repeated urgings to implement directives despite unresolved procedural concerns.
The transfer of the121 active dockets to Pretoria, she said, was chaotic, severing investigations from the local knowledge and relationships on which they depended. Even the KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner, she testified, had not been properly briefed.
Arguments that the PKTT was too expensive did not persuade her. All task teams incur costs, Senthumule said, and expense alone could not justify dismantling a unit operating in one of the country’s most volatile political environments.
The inquiry’s most controversial testimony came from Brown Mogotsi, a North West businessman who claimed a long-standing role as a police informant and Crime Intelligence contact agent.
Mogotsi made sweeping allegations linking the PKTT’s disbandment to manipulation within SAPS, including claims of leaked information and alleged bribery involving senior police leaders and politically connected figures.
Many of his statements were based on hearsay and drew scrutiny from commissioners.
But his evidence illustrated how the PKTT had become entangled in a wider web of allegations — corruption, intelligence manipulation and factional warfare within law enforcement itself.
The question before the Madlanga Commission as it continues in 2026, is no longer simply whether the task team was lawfully disbanded. It is whether South Africa’s policing system can insulate investigations into political violence from executive pressure, criminal infiltration and internal power struggles.
INSIDE POLITICS