With SAPS under scrutiny, what should SA interim police chief prioritise?
Puleng Dimpane may only have a short time available, but she can still do things that strengthen the South African Police Service.
On 23 April, President Cyril Ramaphosa suspended South African Police Service (SAPS) National Commissioner General Fannie Masemola, replacing him with Lieutenant-General Puleng Dimpane, SAPS Chief Financial Officer (CFO), in an acting capacity.
Masemola’s term ends on 31 March 2027 if he is not removed before then. Unless Dimpane is appointed to permanently replace Masemola, she will have served as Acting National Commissioner for less than a year after it started.
Despite the limited window, Dimpane can take targeted steps to strengthen the SAPS disciplinary system and lay a foundation for better leadership.
Masemola’s suspension follows an investigation by the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption into the Medicare 24 Tshwane District procurement scandal. Twelve other SAPS members face fraud and corruption charges in this case alongside alleged organised crime boss Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala, owner of Medicare 24 Tshwane District.
Masemola was a career policeman who joined the force in 1987 and served in many important roles. Though also linked to the Medicare 24 matter, his charges fall under the Public Finance Management Act. As accounting officer for the SAPS, his charges relate to expenditure incurred under the Medicare 24 contract after he was allegedly alerted to likely irregularities.
Dimpane can take targeted steps to strengthen the SAPS disciplinary system and lay a foundation for better leadership
Dimpane joined the SAPS as a lateral entry at colonel rank in 2007, initially as an auditor and later as the Free State provincial head of finance. She was appointed as national CFO in 2019. She holds a BCom and honours degree in business administration and has nearly 20 years’ experience of the organisation’s inner workings.
She has never been a police officer, but could apply her financial management experience to strengthen institutional governance.
Dimpane’s appointment comes at a difficult time for the SAPS. In 2025 two inquiries were launched to investigate allegations of criminal cartel infiltration. Several senior officers are among those whose possible links to the criminal underworld are now being investigated. This has negatively dented morale and deepened uncertainty across the organisation.
Dimpane’s core strength is financial management, an area that clearly needs tightening up. At the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police, the week after her appointment, Dimpane said there was a clear mission to ‘act decisively against wrongdoing within our own ranks.’
Where resistance to reform and greater accountability runs deeper within senior management, Dimpane may struggle to secure full cooperation of the leadership team. There are still critical systems she can strengthen.
The SAPS has pledged to establish dedicated disciplinary units – but no timeline or implementation plan has been provided
At Parliament in November 2025 Dimpane criticised the organisation’s handling of violations of procurement regulations. A June 2025 Institute for Security Studies analysis shows that the tendency towards inappropriate leniency she highlighted is not confined to financial misconduct, but cuts across the SAPS disciplinary system.
One step she should take to address this is to expedite the establishment of dedicated disciplinary units. The SAPS has pledged to establish these units at provincial and national level ‘in due course’ – but no timeline or implementation plan has been provided.
Financial management, integrity and discipline are critical, but South Africa’s policing challenges go far beyond these. Of all the fixes the SAPS requires, leadership has implications for everything else and demands the greatest attention.
Since 2000, not one national commissioner has completed their full term of office. Some have been removed for corruption or dishonesty, others for failing to adequately fulfil their responsibilities. Career police officers and civilians alike have consistently left the organisation in much the same condition they found it.
When he announced Masemola’s appointment as national commissioner in March 2022, Ramaphosa said each candidate was assessed against a range of ‘critical competencies’, including strategic capability and leadership, financial management, change management and integrity.
The assessment criteria listed sound impressive, but it remains unclear what levels of performance the successful candidate demonstrated on any of them. The multidimensional nature of the role would be challenging for anyone to take on. Strong SAPS leadership requires not only a high-quality national commissioner but a highly capable senior leadership team.
A priority objective must be a much higher calibre of SAPS leadership that can restore respect for the organisation
The power to appoint the national commissioner ultimately lies with the president – but the president can only appoint from the available candidates.
The current leadership development system is obviously failing to provide the police service with the senior leaders it needs. But police service management have it within their power to initiate a process to ensure that the SAPS of the future can be guided by a new calibre of police leaders.
SAPS annual reports indicate that its leadership and management development programmes, attended by thousands of personnel each year, have annual pass rates of over 99.9%.
Statistics of this kind are unlikely to reflect the existence of an effective leadership development programme. They suggest a system that applies little rigour to identifying strong candidates or assessing whether the organisation can produce leaders equipped to steer it on South Africa’s complex policing terrain.
Given the depth of the crisis, Dimpane should encourage SAPS leadership to consider more actively how the police service needs to be strengthened. One priority objective must be a much higher calibre of SAPS leadership that can restore respect for the organisation, both internally and with the South African public.
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