Police capture: DA's secrecy weakens fight against crime

THE DA has been one the main parties making the loudest noise about alleged police infiltration by criminal cartels while conveniently ignoring the secrecy that continues to shroud a similar issue where it governs in the Western Cape. 

When KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi disclosed the intricate details of attempts to capture the SAPS by criminal syndicates allegedly with the help of now suspended police Minister Senzo Mchunu, he was not saying anything new to those that have been following this issue. 

In fact Mchunu’s predecessor Bheki Cele told the Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee that Western Cape High Court Judge Daniel Thulare was the first to speak about corrupt operations of SAPS officials who have links to organised crime and how the safety of state prosecutors had been compromised.

Part of that judgment reads: “There were members of the police who he (state witness) knew as close to the Guptas (extortion gang), who asked him why he was at the police station and also told him that he liked being at the police station. Mr X (state witness) was hounded even when he was in police protection. He had to be rerouted when the destination to a safe place became known to the Gupta gang, of which the accused were members. The gang worked with some police officers and had an established network in their rule by the bullet through gangsterism, forceful demand for ‘protection fees’ and extortion.”

Those remarks spurred the DA-led provincial government to ask the police ombudsman in the Western Cape to probe the alleged police links to gangs as highlighted in the Thulare judgment. 

What that report found is not known to the public because premier Alan Winde chose to classify that report. That was more than two years ago. We must mention that this is an investigation done using public money, yet not a single senior DA official has demanded the release of this crucial report. So much so for a party that claims to uphold transparency and accountability in its government.

The DA cannot claim to be serious in its demands for more policing powers to the province when its approach is characterised by secrecy.

In whose interest is this report being shielded from the public? If a senior police officer such as Mkhwanazi can name and shame his colleagues implicated in alleged wrongdoing, risking not only his life but that of his family as well, why can premier Winde follow this example? 

Unless he and the DA know something the rest of us do not know.

CAPE TIME