Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department (EMPD) deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi faces allegations of covering up for three officers implicated in a string of crimes, including torture and murder of a civilian, a witness told the Madlanga commission on Monday.
Former EMPD deputy chief Revo Spies took the witness box on Monday and told the commission about “rogue” police officers under special services headed by Mkhwanazi.
The Madlanga commission is investigating systematic weaknesses and allegations of criminal infiltration of the security and justice cluster, including the EMPD.
Spies said the three officers ― Adrian McKenzie, Bafana Twala and Kesha-Lee Stals ― were implicated in numerous criminal cases but have not been disciplined or prosecuted as some of their cases have remained under investigation for years.
Spies told the commission that in March 2023 the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) arrested the three officers for kidnapping and extortion of a supermarket manager in Benoni in 2022.
“They were arrested in front of us,” he said.
The victim alleged that the officers entered his shop in Benoni and confiscated many boxes of cigarettes, “which they claimed he was illegally in possession of and arrested him as well”.
He said the victim told police the officers travelled with him and dropped him near a field along the N12 in Benoni and “took his cellphone and R200 and they told him to run away into the veld because he was a foreigner”.
Stals, who later resigned from the EMPD, allegedly went into the Benoni police station and registered a carton of cigarettes, which, she wrote in police documents, “was picked up in a veld”.
The National Prosecuting Authority provisionally withdrew the kidnapping and extortion case in April after being unable to locate the victim, who opened the case.
“It is as if the complainant is either dead, gone or missing because he cannot be found,” Spies said.
Another case involving the officers is that of copper theft in which Spies obtained video footage from his informant, Jaco Hanekom, showing Mkhwanazi and EMPD officers in the yard of a complainant from Meyerton.
Spies said the victim had alleged the officers had stolen his copper by pretending to impound it in August 2022.
Spies told the commission Hanekom had been killed in what had been reported to have been an attempted hijacking on March 17, the day the officers were released on bail.
Spies said he was unconvinced about the alleged motive for Hanekom’s murder.
The third case linked to the officers was the murder allegations.
Spies said an Ipid investigator had told them the three officers had been involved in the murder of a civilian who had died after being tortured. His body had been dumped in a dam.
“It was traced back to the same group of officers together with civilians. It was alleged they torched the civilian on [the] scene and used a method called tubing,” he said, referring to the practice of suffocating a person by pulling a piece of rubber over his or her face.
One of the people who was at the scene has now become a state witness.
Spies said the witness had told the police that after the man had died the officers had called Mkhwanazi who arrived at the scene and allegedly advised on how to dispose of the body.
“They placed the body of the victim on the civilian’s [state witness’] bakkie. They instructed him to dump the body.”
Spies told the commission that the case had also been withdrawn.
When asked what EMPD did to implement discipline, Spies said Mkhwanazi and human resource management had protected the officials.
Mkhwanazi in 2023 was found to have unlawfully fitted blue lights, reserved for law enforcement officers, to cars belonging to attempted murder accused Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.
Mkhwanazi, when probed, produced a memorandum purported to have been signed by senior EMPD officials sealing a working relationship between the department and Matlala’s company.
EMPD head Isaac Mapiyeye told the commission the memorandums were fraudulent.
Spies said he and Mapiyeye could not enforce discipline because Mkhwanazi and the officers had been “highly” protected by former city manager Imogen Mashazi.
He and Mapiyeye had received death threats after advocating that Mkhwanazi be disciplined in 2023, he told the commission.
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