Monday, July 6, marks one year since KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi stood before cameras and delivered a media briefing that stunned the nation.
Rarely, if ever, has a single event in South Africa’s democratic history so violently dislodged the nation’s collective jaw and kept it suspended in disbelief for an entire year.
Mkhwanazi’s extraordinary allegations of criminality, corruption and institutional capture in the criminal justice system were not merely explosive; they marked the beginning of a slow, relentless unravelling of what many had long suspected but few could prove.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the road to the Madlanga commission of inquiry — established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate Mkhwanazi’s bombshell allegations — was paved with gold.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Long before the commission heard testimony from its first witness, it faced formidable headwinds: a cynical section of the media, a public weary of commissions of inquiry that too often promised much and delivered little, and a fiscally constrained government grappling with an array of competing national priorities.
Yet, against those odds, the commission, led by former acting deputy chief justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, has not only produced encouraging early signs of progress but has also distinguished itself through its efficiency, efficacy, rigour and unwavering commitment to its mandate.
In doing so, it established what may well become the benchmark — indeed, the gold standard — against which future judicial commissions of inquiry are measured.
Yet, amid the unfolding revelations, a cynical, powerful and often patronising section of the media — seemingly content to serve as a megaphone for a compromised faction in the criminal justice system which has come under Madlanga’s increasingly penetrating scrutiny — clung stubbornly to one question, repeated with almost ritualistic insistence: “Where’s the evidence?”
But with every affidavit, every witness, every corroborating account and every fresh revelation, the picture has grown darker, the allegations graver and the implications more chilling. What first appeared almost too astonishing to believe has steadily acquired the weight of credibility.
To say South Africans have been shocked, or that only a few dominoes have fallen, would be to trivialise the past 12 months. The reckoning has been far more consequential.
Major scalps have been claimed, long-entrenched power structures have been shaken, and institutions once thought impervious have found themselves under unprecedented scrutiny.
Careers have unravelled, reputations have crumbled, and some of the most powerful figures in politics, law enforcement and the criminal justice system have been cut down.
Perhaps the commission’s most consequential contribution was neither anticipated nor central to its mandate.
Beyond advancing the cause of justice through recommendations in its first report — several of which were implemented by Ramaphosa — the commission unwittingly became a mirror through which South Africans could assess the character, resolve and institutional integrity of parliament and the criminal justice system.
In doing so, it revealed not only how these institutions responded to one of the defining crises of the democratic era, but also whether they rose to meet the moment or shrank from it.
The ad hoc committee established by parliament to examine Mkhwanazi’s allegations proved memorable, though not for the reasons many had hoped.
Procedural disorder, an apparent improvisational approach, political grandstanding, bouts of petulance and the mistreatment afforded to certain witnesses came to define much of its public proceedings.
Ironically, some of the conduct displayed by political actors — including which key witnesses not to call — during the hearings appeared only to reinforce concerns of political interference similar to those that had prompted Mkhwanazi’s allegations and, ultimately, the parliamentary inquiry itself.
For many South Africans, the proceedings did little to restore confidence in parliament. Instead, they reinforced a growing perception that political theatre too often eclipses the solemn constitutional duty of rigorous oversight — an unfortunate reality to which the nation has become increasingly accustomed.
Long-simmering fault lines, factional battles, and bitter turf wars — particularly in the SAPS crime intelligence division, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, and the National Prosecuting Authority’s Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, whose existence Mkhwanazi first publicly disclosed during his media briefing — spilt into full public view at the commission, including through recent high-profile prosecutorial decisions.
Not even the Fourth Estate has been immune to the factional battles consuming the criminal justice system.
While sections of the media have performed an invaluable public service by exposing corruption, others in the selfsame media outlets appear to have surrendered their journalistic independence, casting themselves as paternalistic custodians of the truth even when their reporting may serve neither the public interest nor the national interest.
Mkhwanazi is no saint, nor has he ever claimed to be. But if there were lingering doubts about his sincerity, patriotism, commitment to the rule of law, personal integrity or the evidential foundation of the assertions he made in July last year, the events of the past year have all but dispelled them.
Over the past 12 months, the nation has watched and continues to watch, not in stunned silence, but fervently, engaged like never before, as allegations have emerged of criminal networks allegedly reaching into institutions established not merely to enforce the law but to defend the republic itself.
Alas, space denies me the indulgence of revisiting the commission’s more unforgettable moments: the comic relief, the mysterious claims of panic attacks, the endless requests for water, the smoke-and-mirrors theatrics, the astonishing bouts of selective amnesia, and, above all, the incisive, relentless questioning by the commissioners that has come to define the Madlanga commission.
It has been a year in which disbelief gradually yielded to an uncomfortable question: if even a fraction of Mkhwanazi’s allegations proves true, what does that say about the state we thought we knew?
The Madlanga commission was never merely an inquiry into corruption. It became an inquiry into the character of a nation — its institutions, its leaders, its media and, ultimately, its citizens. The verdict is still being written.
• Khaas is chairperson of Public Interest SA and director of The Ethics Academy.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.