-
KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is testifying before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry in Pretoria, September 18, 2025.
KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has detailed how some arrests ended up not being effected after 121 dockets were seized from the provincial political killings task team.
He is testifying before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry in Pretoria.
Mkhwanazi says the arrests were not made despite a court order to arrest the perpetrators of the crimes.
He says the task team’s dockets formed part of its investigations into corruption and political interference in law enforcement agencies.
“Now, for the period when these dockets were handed over to the head office, there were five of those dockets that had instruction to arrest suspects, because the instruction [to hand over dockets] came before the execution of those arrests.”
“Those dockets sat amongst the total dockets in the head office and those arrests were not effected. What is more troubling about this is that the head office detective services had conducted some inspection on these dockets as I indicated yesterday.”
Earlier, Mkhwanazi added that the province’s political killings task team continued its work despite Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s instruction to disband it.
He says Mchunu, who is on special leave, issued the instruction in a letter.
The task team is at the centre of the inquiry, which is looking into Mkhwanazi’s allegations that senior police officials, including Mchunu, interfere in policing operations and have links to criminal syndicates.
Mkhwanazi explains why the task team continued to work: “Commissioner, as I said yesterday, the instruction was not officially given to me. It would’ve been sent to the national commissioner. The national commissioner did not communicate anything with me. But what I know of is that the team continued to work; it never stopped.”
“However, the number of members that were deployed to the team was reduced. The reason could be perhaps the reduction of the total number of persons deployed may have been influenced by the budget.”
Live stream:
