Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s crime wardens initiative, now deemed irregular by the public protector, should be a lesson on the danger of populism for the provincial leader, who thrives on bluster and headlines.
Last week started off positively for Lesufi after billionaire business person Patrice Motsepe raised his name in a discussion about potential presidential candidates, in which Motsepe repeated his position that he was not interested in being president but associated Lesufi with the post.
However, by Thursday, public protector Kholeka Gcaleka had declared that the crime wardens, commonly known as “amaPanyaza”, were established without legal basis and were therefore unconstitutional.
The crime warden initiative was announced in 2023 by Lesufi as a political response to the province’s worsening crime crisis. From its inception analysts questioned their legality, but Lesufi dug in his heels, strongly defending the initiative.
In 2023, while welcoming newly trained wardens, he even advocated for them to be armed. “We have concluded training those who are ready to carry weapons. We are ready to release weapons to you so you can shoot when the enemy shoots at you.
“You are going to be trained every day, every month, every year so those who think we have rushed you to go to the streets can eat humble pie,” he said in June.
During parliament’s ad hoc committee hearings on the allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, including that police minister Senzo Mchunu and deputy national police commissioner Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya were working with criminal cartels to scupper investigations, the controversial crime wardens came under the spotlight.
Mkhwanazi raised the issue while testifying before MPs two weeks ago, when he said he had strongly objected to the initiative in a meeting of the police service’s highest decision-making body, the board of commissioners. He told MPs he argued at the time that the crime wardens were unlawful, a view that was later confirmed by SA Police Service (SAPS) legal services.
Despite this, senior SAPS managers said, “just leave the premier alone”, and training for the crime wardens went ahead, he said.
“My argument [before the board of commissioners] and the support from legal services were not taken seriously. So they continued with the training. But because legal services had taken note of it, they went to the minister and said, ‘Minister, you cannot sign this off; it is against the law.’”
The minister at the time was Bheki Cele.
“Obviously, the premier of Gauteng was not very pleased that minister Cele did not want to sign them off. As a result, to date that unit, that group of members, could not be incorporated into the Police Act. They are still there in Gauteng. I’m not sure whether they are enforcing the law or what they are doing in Gauteng, but legally they are not supposed to be there,” Mkhwanazi said.
His testimony in parliament illustrates that government at its highest levels was aware that Lesufi’s crime wardens were unlawful and yet turned a blind eye. Gcaleka’s report confirms this, showing that after Lesufi’s announcement his administration went ahead with employing the crime wardens without doing any due diligence on whether such a structure was legal or not.
Gcaleka’s report showed that as far back as December 2023, Lesufi and national ministries were aware that there was no legal basis for the crime wardens as police officers or as peace officers. A meeting was held between the premier, and the police and justice ministers to look at alternative options, such as turning the recruits into traffic wardens.
Yet Lesufi took over 10 months to announce this and did so only when Gcaleka was about to release her report, which found that the establishment of the crime wardens in the absence of a legal framework was a violation of the constitution, constituting “impropriety and maladministration”.
What worsens Lesufi’s disregard for the law is that he went ahead knowing there was no basis for the crime wardens in SA’s legal framework, revealing a crude disregard for due process, which Lesufi blatantly undermined.
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