Nahlanhla Mkhwanazi: The highest cop that gives up politicians

A very respected police officer shook the government of South Africa – and won the admiration of many ordinary people – with his explosive claims that organized criminal groups have penetrated the upper echelons of President Cyril Ramafosa’s administration.

Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi did it in a dramatic style – dressed in military uniform and surrounded by masked police officers with automatic weapons, he called at a press conference to blame police minister Szcen Machun that he had contact with criminal gangs.

He also said his boss had closed an elite unit investigating political killings after finding a drug cartel with a tentacle in the business sector, the prison department, the prosecutor’s office and the judiciary.

“We are in the regime of fighting, I take the criminals directly,” he said in an address broadcast live on national television earlier this month.

The South Africans have long been concerned about organized crime, which, a leading expert in crime Dr. Johan Burger, said it was at a “very serious level”.

One of the most famous cases was that of the longest-time police chief in South Africa, Jackie Celeby, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010, after being sentenced to bribe an Italian Lord of Drugs Glen Aglioti, in exchange for closing his eyes to his criminal activity.

But the intervention of the Gen. was unprecedented – the first time a police officer has publicly accused a cabinet member, let alone the one responsible for the police for contact with criminal gangs.

The reaction was instant. Machun has dismissed the allegations as “wild and unfounded” and said he “was ready to respond to the accusations”, but the public has gathered around a gene shakes – the Quazulu -Natal police commissioner – despite the province is also a political tour of Machun.

#HandSoffnhlanhlamkhwanazi tops the list of trends in X, in a warning shot by the government not to touch the 52-year-old officer.

“He (seen as) a man without nonsense who takes the bull for horns,” a crime expert based on the University of South Africa told the BBC in Johannesburg.

The Mkhwanazi gene first won public admiration almost 15 years ago when, as a police chief of South Africa, he stopped the crime intelligence chief Richard Mdlouli, a close ally of then President Jacob Zuma.

Later, Mdluli was sentenced to five years in prison for kidnapping, attacking and intimidating, avenging the Gen Mkhwanazi’s opinion that he had rotten an apple within the police office.

The Gen. Muhri was confronted with enormous pressure to defend Mdlouli, with his political bosses assumed that the officer, at the age of only 38, would be “open to manipulation (but) they were grossly wrong,” said Dr. Burger.

Not only did he move on with the suspension of Mdluli, but also claims for political intervention during a statement in parliament.

While this move earned him brownie points with citizens, his public outburst did not make him a favor and he was only applied to work and went back to the unknown for several years.

He made a dramatic return in 2018, when the then Minister of Police Bheki Cele appointed him to the provincial police office, one of his main tasks being to investigate the killings in a province where competition for political power – and lucrative state offers – is cruel.

The dissolution of this investigative unit by Machunu led to the explosive briefing of the gene pawn two weeks ago, complaining that 121 cases of cases “collect dust” at the National Police Headquarters.

“I will die for this (police) badge. I will not retreat,” said Gen., in accordance with his reputation that he is a brave and selfless officer who cannot be captured by a corrupt political and business elite.

Study of Human Science Research Council (HSCRC) shows that public confidence in the police is the lowest of 22%, of 22%,

Police forces have long been struck by issues of political intervention, corruption and seemingly incapable of effectively coping with high levels of crime.

The crisis has also reached the upper structures of the forces, with about 10 different police chiefs since 2000 – one has been convicted of corruption and another is currently facing criminal charges.

“Dysfunction is at all levels,” said Gareth Newham of the BBC -based Praetoria Research Institute, adding that “there is a lot of dynamics in the police office that needs to be fixed.”

But Gen Mkhwanazi’s term of office was not without dispute. He was the subject of investigation by the police guard after a complaint that he was interfering with a criminal investigation by a senior prison official.

However, he was released from the prosecution last month, with opposition fighters of economic freedom (EFF) saying that the complaint was “intended to derail an engaged officer who is ruthless in his fight against crime and corruption.”

The Mkhwanazi gene team also faced criticism of their difficult approach to criminal suspects, who are sometimes shot in confrontations with officers under his command.

G -n Novham said that with a gene, he was regarded as the “cop of the cop”, the public was ready to close their eyes to the alleged abuse of their officers because “they want to have a hero in the police.”

With the sent pack of Machunu South Africa, there will be a new acting Minister of Police from the next month – Firoz Kachalia, a professor of law who comes from a famous family of antipartheid activists and serves as Minister of Community Safety in D., South Africa’s economic heart, from 2004 to 2009.

In an interview with the local television station, Newzroom Afrika, Cachalia said the Mkhwanazi gene’s decision to publish publicly with his explosive claims was “extremely unusual”, but if it turned out to be true, “we will be able to see in a retrospective that he is fully justified to do what he did.”

So Gen Mkhwanazi’s confidence is online – or he proves his allegations against Machun, or he can fall on his sword.

But for now, he has cemented his reputation as a brave policeman who took over his political bosses – twice.