Reports of Alleged South Africa’s Police Minister Links to Criminal Gangs “deeply unsettling”: Catholic Bishops

Gen. Mkhwanazi explained that the two government officials disbanded the task team in December 2024 and hijacked key case dockets tied to politically motivated killings.

At the July 6 press briefing, Gen. Mkhwanazi reportedly presented WhatsApp conversations allegedly between businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala (an alleged beneficiary of a R360 million police contract later cancelled in May) and an associate of Minister Senzo Mchunu. The chat messages purportedly showed financial support for Minister Senzo Mchunu’s political activities and coordination to dissolve the task team.

According to another July 7 report, Gen. Mkhwanazi alleged that senior security officials alongside Senzo Mchunu and Shadrack Sibiya were actively involved in the disruption of investigations by transferring case dockets, removing firearms evidence, and arresting task team members through the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption to derail the inquiry.

Gen. Mkhwanazi warned of a criminal network’s infiltration into multiple state organs – including law enforcement, judiciary, prosecutors, and correctional services – and went on to assert that drug cartels and business elites have “taken control” of these State institutions.

In the July 10 statement, Cardinal Brislin says that “the allegations raised by Lt. Gen. Mkhwanazi will deepen the layers of negativity around police work, its wider human rights culture, and its ultimate efficacy.”

For the President of the three-nation Conference that brings together Catholic Bishops in Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa, “It is imperative that the issues he (Gen. Mkhwanazi) raised be afforded immediate and impartial attention.”

Based on the seriousness of these allegations and for the integrity of the police force, the Local Ordinary of the Catholic Archdiocese of Johannesburg following his transfer from South Africa’s Cape Town Catholic Archdiocese calls upon the South African government to take “urgent and definitive action”.

“It is of the very highest importance that the President and those concerned take urgent and definitive action to investigate the allegations, bring to book those who have broken the law, transgressed the rule of law and undermined the public's confidence in the police force,” he says.

The 68-year-old South African Cardinal, who started his Episcopal Ministry in January 2007 as Bishop of South Africa’s Kroonstad Catholic Diocese proposes the immediate formation of an independent body  “to investigate these allegations as well as broader issues around police leadership and performance.”

Meanwhile, in a July 8 statement, the leadership of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) denounces the allegations against Minister Senzo Mchunu as not only “serious” but also “disconcerting to us as the council.”

In the statement “from the desk” of SACC’s Secretary General, Rev. Mzwandile Molo of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, the leadership of the forum that has Catholic Church representatives says that the reported allegations “implicate a minister in serious criminal activities, who himself is charged with leading the country in the fight against crime.”

The allegations, the three-page SACC statement indicates, “not only undermine the nation’s fight against crime but also cause serious reputational harm to the police service, a key national instrument of keeping the nation safe.”

“It is troubling to entertain the thought that someone with all the power and instruments bestowed on him by our constitution and state is possibly using this to facilitate criminality instead of fighting crime. It is a scary thought for our nation,” SACC leadership says.

It adds that the allegations are also shocking and distressing, revealing a seeming collapse of trust between the ministry and the South African Police Service (SAPS) itself.

“These allegations are made at a time when the fight against crime needs all of our collective efforts as the safety and peace of our people is at stake, because of the extremely high levels of crime in our country,” SACC leadership says.

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The leadership of the church entity notes that “our people’s confidence in the police service is alarmingly low as trust in most cases is non-existent. This in itself is a crisis in policing, which is exacerbated by such serious allegations against a senior member of the cabinet.”

“As an organization rooted in faith, the SACC is guided by truth-seeking as a fundamental Christian value,” the leadership says, and adds, “The pursuit of truth must always be at the centre of all our endeavours as we serve the South African public.”

In the July 8 statement, SACC leadership calls upon the President Cyril Ramaphosa-led government to protect whistleblowers who courageously expose wrongdoing and have all persons implicated in the allegations step aside pending the outcomes of investigation.

This, SACC leadership says, will preserve the integrity of the investigation process.

“The safety and security of the people is a sacred responsibility of any state, and the head of state cannot fail the nation in executing that task by pandering to political and corrupt interests,” the SACC leadership says in the July 8 three-page statement titled, “SACC Deeply Concerned Over Serious Allegations Levelled on Minister Mchunu.”