Staff shortages force Hawks to outsource on key cases

THE Hawks are currently operating with almost half the personnel provided for in its organogram.

The staff establishment stood at 2,688, including detectives and support staff when the entity is supposed to have 5,332 personnel.

This emerged when Hawks divisional commissioner Patrick Mbotho appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday.

“In this financial year 2025/26, the police management and we agreed that we are going to prioritise 500 posts. The 500 is to be made up of 300 posts to be advertised internally for us to source within police investigators, but the other 200 is reserved for external advertisements for those posts we don’t have capacity internally, such as forensic accountants.”

He also said they were in the process of capacitating the cybersecurity environment.

Mbotho was quizzed after in their presentation failed to give factors that impact the DPCI investigations, despite promising to do so in the presentation shared with Scopa.

When pressed on the matter, Major-General Mmeli Makinyane said some of the cases they handled needed skills they did not have.

“We have to outsource to get to the bottom of those cases. The presentation did not get to that information,” Makinyane said.

He also said resource issues have significantly impacted them and resulted in a delay in finalising investigations.

Mbotho added that one of the reasons for the long investigations, especially in matters related to the defence force, was the time it took for declassification of information.

The Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority were to brief Scopa on corruption cases involving government departments, public entities, municipalities, and other high-profile cases referred by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).

Independent Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) head of investigation Matthew Sesoko said they did not have in-house capacity in forensic digital investigation.

“The nature of investigations takes longer to complete. They straddle through different jurisdictions.  We have to contend with extradition applications,” Sesoko said.

Nkebe Kanyane, special director to the NPA Special Commercial Crime Unit (SCCU), said not all matters referred by the SIU to the NPA ended up with the Hawks.

“Some of the matters in NPA that were referred to would not be in DPCI because of a lack of complexity. DPCI attends matters of a complex nature,” she said.

Speaking on the National Lottery Commission cases, Kanyane said they were complex and involved many entities and individuals that created trusts and companies used as vehicles to defraud the commission.

Cape Times