South Africa: Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit arrested and ANC National Policy Conference

20 police members of Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit arrested

For a number of years, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) has recorded high numbers of suspects killed by police officers compared with all other provinces. This has been an issue of concern for organisations dealing with human rights, but the state failed to take any action to understand why this was happening or to address it.

One unit that has been in the news over the years for both its excellent arrest record and suspicion of unlawful killings is the Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit. Two of the most prominent cases against the unit is the murder of taxi boss Bongani Mkhize and the killing of suspects who were wanted for the murder of policeman Superindent Zethembe Chonco. Mkhize’s violent death made newspaper headlines as he had managed to secure a High Court interdict forbidding the police from killing him three months before he was gunned down by members of the unit.  At the time the official version was that the police officers had returned fire after he had shot at them first.

The matter came to a head earlier this year when the Sunday Times newspaper reported on its front page that this unit was operating as a ‘death squad’. A joint investigation was then set up involving the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) and the SAPS Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (also known as the Hawks). On Wednesday morning last week 20 police officers, most of whom are members of the unit, were arrested on charges of murder, assault, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. In total they are facing 71 criminal charges, of which 14 are for murder. The IPID had looked at 51 cases of deaths linked to this unit. The prosecution announced during the bail hearing on Thursday that it would consider bringing an additional 16 murder cases against members of the unit.

However, the timing of the arrest is an issue of concern. While, on the face of it, the arrests signal a commitment from the SAPS to tackle a rogue unit that was taking the law into its own hands, a number of issues have started to raise questions about the motives behind the arrests. In particular, the presence of the recently fired former Police Comissioner Bheki Cele has highlighted a political dimension to the arrests. Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa and new Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega both appeared at a hastily arranged press conference on the day of the arrests, but denied that they had a hand in the arrests. 

It has been alleged that some of those arrested were investigating claims of corruption involving high-ranking police and politicians. Interestingly, the Sunday Times story emanated from Colonel Navin Madhoe, an officer in the SAPS KZN provincial procurement office charged with trying to bribe the KZN Head of the Hawks, Major General Johan Booysen, with R2 million to drop a R60 million corruption case.  This is one of a number of corruption cases involving politically connected individuals in the province whom the KZN Hawks have been investigating. There are suspicions therefore that while some officers of the Cato Manor unit may have a case to answer, there is an additional dimension to the operation, mainly to undermine these investigations. The fact that an offer by those arrested to hand themselves over to the police was rejected so that the media could be summonsed to partake in ‘Hollywood-style’ raids, adds weight to allegations that this operation is not only about addressing a rogue unit in the province.

Developments ahead of the ANC National Policy Conference

The ANC’s Free State branch had its provincial conference at the weekend, which saw Ace Magashule being re-elected unopposed as ANC chairman for the Free State. The conference was delayed three times because of divisions within the Free State ANC constituency between supporters of Magashule and of provincial economic development MEC Mxolisi Dukwana. As a result, senior ANC provincial leaders and the ANC Youth League’s provincial leadership boycotted the conference.

The election of Magashule was a boost for Zuma, who for some time has been experiencing growing resistance within the ANC and its alliance to a second term in office. Magashule is a supporter of Zuma and appeared to act in defiance of an NEC instruction that people should not engage in leadership lobbying until October when he threw his weight behind Zuma. He later argued that he was simply supporting the current president of the ANC.

Zuma closed the conference on Sunday and spoke out against those who questioned the recently released ANC policy document titled ‘The Second Transition: Building a national democratic society and the balance of forces in 2012’. One of 13 documents to be discussed at the ANC Policy Conference starting this week, it argues that for the past 18 years ANC has gone through a ‘first transition’ into democracy, where it focused on political emancipation. There was now a need for the ANC to introduce a ‘second transition’ focusing on the social and economic transformation of South Africa over the next 30 to 50 years. However, since its release a number of ANC provincial executive structures have come out against it, including Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Limpopo. The Deputy President of the ANC Kgalema Motlanthe and alliance partners COSATU and the SACP have also questioned it. Most have criticised the document for being contradictory, thin on theory and fact and failing to relate to other ANC guiding documents such as the Freedom Charter. 

Arguments have been made that this policy document will become a proxy for leadership tussles at the policy conference. Because there are no clear rules for an open and transparent discussion on leadership succession in the ANC, lobbying takes place in secret using proxy methods. For example, those who support Zuma’s bid for a second term as ANC president will support the ‘second transition’ document, while those who support another candidate will argue against it. Moreover, voting takes the form of ‘slates’ in which supporters of particular factions will vote for a group of people to take the top six positions and not for candidates individually. Unfortunately, as some analysts have argued, this leads to ANC policies that cannot be implemented as they reflect factional battles within the ANC rather than the desire to solve the country’s many pressing problems.  Therefore, any policies adopted by the winning faction at the National Conference (to be held at the end of the year) will be resisted by the losers, hindering their implementation. Alternatively, if a new faction gains power, they will reject most previous policies and introduce a raft of new ones, resulting in a situation whereby the state has to start afresh and institutional memory and experience is lost.  The solution to this problem is to allow an open competition for positions with clearly defined rules so that ANC delegates can choose the best leaders to take the ANC forward.

Based on the contribution of Mr Gareth Newham, from the Crime and Justice Division, ISS Pretoria office