Share article

Copy article link

Print article

After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, there was significant optimism about police reform in the country. Impressive steps were taken to bring the South African Police Service under civilian control and to create a service responsive to calls for assistance from the public.

During the apartheid period, South Africa's police worked to preserve the political order and pursue political opponents. It did not focus on dealing with crime. This is why the achievements of the 1990s are so important. For the first time, black South Africans could call upon officers to respond to personal emergencies. This period also saw a drop in crime levels.

However, this promising early transformation was interrupted. The appointment of Jackie Selebi as national police commissioner in 2000 heralded a new era. Selebi was an African National Congress (ANC) insider. The ANC originated as a liberation movement and has governed the country since 1994.

Selebi had served as the head of the ANC's Youth League in the 1980s, when it was banned. In 1987 he was appointed to the organisation's national executive committee, its highest decision-making organ.

His appointment as police commissioner was the start of significant change in the purpose of policing. It marked the end of the focus on civilian control of the police force and prosecuting authorities. As an ANC insider, Selebi led efforts to establish party control over the police.

This politicisation gained momentum over the next two decades. In the early years it was exemplified by the suspension of the head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Advocate Vusi Pikoli,, by then president Thabo Mbeki, amid corruption allegations against Selebi himself.

Other telling developments ensued. The Scorpions were disbanded in 2009 by acting president Kgalema Motlanthe. The unit's job was to pursue high-profile cases against senior ANC politicians (among others).

The police became increasingly entangled in the ANC's internal political conflicts. At the same time the office of the national police commissioner experienced high turnover due to intense political manoeuvring. Between 2009 and 2022, there were seven national commissioners.

Recent developments have once again brought the intermingling of police work and power battles in the ANC to the fore. In early July 2025, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the commissioner of police in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, made some startling claims. He called a press conference and, wearing camouflage uniform, he implicated the minister of police, Senzo Mchunu, together with the deputy national commissioner for crime detection, in a scheme to close down investigations into political assassinations in the province.

President Cyril Ramaphosa rushed back from a meeting of the Brics countries in Brazil to attend to the matter. He announced that the police minister had been placed on leave with immediate effect. He also announced a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

I have conducted research into South Africa's security apparatus over the last decade. Based on this work, and new research forthcoming in the Journal of Southern African Studies done with Jelena Vidojevic, co-founder of the New South Institute, it is clear that elite contestation in the ANC is intensifying.

In other words, the ability of internal party structures to manage gatekeeping is declining. Many of the people involved are indifferent or even hostile to South Africa's democratic and constitutional order.

As the ability of some political elites to access state resources through the party declines, some are linked with organised criminal networks. Organised crime has been on the edges of South African politics. It now risks taking a more central role.

In this environment, the police service will often be the thin (blue) line between multiparty contestation according to constitutional rules and the criminalisation of politics in South Africa.

Large organisational changes within the police vividly illustrate this shift away from its core function.

The Visible Policing programme was meant to meant to deter crime through patrols, checkpoints and roadblocks. But, instead, there was a steady decline in resource allocation. Employee numbers dropped between 2015 and 2021.

Detective services and crime intelligence also experienced such declines.

Conversely, employee numbers in the Protection and Security Services programme, responsible for providing bodyguards to politicians, increased sharply between 2014 and 2016.

Evidence heard by the commission of inquiry into state capture suggested that some officers and budgets in the service were even used to supply President Jacob Zuma and other politicians with what amounted to a private militia.

This reorientation of resources coincided with a rise in crime across the country, a decline in arrests by 24.5%, and a drop in the police's efficacy in solving crimes.

Furthermore, a politicised police leadership effectively stopped policing various categories of crime. This was particularly true of offences like fraud, corruption, and certain types of theft, and particularly when politically connected persons were involved.

The state capture commission heard extensive evidence about the failure of the police to pursue politically sensitive investigations. Investigations into senior officials were frequently frustrated or impeded, and cases at state-owned enterprises were abandoned.

This shows how police resources were actively redirected as weapons of elite competition, pursuing political enemies and protecting allies within the ruling party.

Mkhwanazi's claims, if substantiated, suggest that this political policing remains entrenched.

Ramaphosa has announced the appointment of Firoz Cachalia as the acting minister of police. Cachalia, a well regarded legal academic, served as ANC minister for community safety. Between 2019 and 2022 he was part of the ANC's national executive committee.

His appointment raises serious questions.

If the core problem with the police is that it has become embroiled in ANC internal politics, having an ANC insider head the ministry of police (even if only on an acting basis) threatens only to compound the problem.

Moreover, South Africans have already witnessed a long and expensive judicial inquiry into state capture. And despite extensive evidence of police failure to pursue politically sensitive investigations, nothing concrete has come of it.

How likely is it that this new initiative will be any different, especially if those investigating it and presiding over key institutions are themselves ANC insiders?

To depoliticise the police service and redirect its attention and activities towards crime and emergencies, a crucial first step is to reconsider the appointment processes for the national police commissioner and other top managers.

Under the current system the president has sole discretion. This bakes party-political considerations into the decision-making process.

Without structural changes, genuine democratic policing will remain an elusive ideal.

In 2024/25 the murder rate in South Africa stood at 42 per 100,000, among the highest in the world and close to levels not seen since the early 2000s.

At the very least, the minister of police must not be an ANC insider. Democratic renewal in South Africa requires bringing the police firmly under parliamentary control.