Reports on how the crime intelligence unit of the South African Police Service (SAPS) is riddled with factionalism and infighting should be of great worry to all South Africans.
While factions are, by their very nature, self-defeating, it is more dire that such hara-kiri should find fertile ground to fester inside this prime police unit.
Crime intelligence are the eyes and ears of the crucial arm of policing needed to sustain any country’s sovereignty.
It cannot be good that the police inside crime intelligence are tearing each other apart while the country is held to ransom by the burden of crime.
It is perhaps needless to remind ourselves of the shame brought to bear on us as a country when self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri stole into the night and escaped to his native Malawi.
This regrettable incident, which has landed us in a diplomatic nightmare of having to seek the extradition of the Bushiris, would not have happened in the first place if crime intelligence had not taken their eyes off the ball.
The highly decorated men in the intelligence unit are smart enough to appreciate the calamity of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. They are guilty of the same miscalculation.
It is worrisome that such unsavoury characters as Zane Kilian – the man at the centre of an investigation into the murder of Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) detective Charl Kinnear, murdered outside his Bishop Lavis home in September, are singing like canaries about how he was paid to have Kinnear removed.
It is becoming apparent that the AGU is not staffed by angels. The police members in the AGU are at each other’s throats as well, with underworld characters doing their bidding, and confessing when caught.
It certainly does not augur well for the integrity of the police that the head of the AGU, Major-General Andre Lincoln’s name features prominently in the trial of an accused linked to the hand grenade found outside Kinnear’s home.
Lincoln’s name comes up again in claims by notorious Cape Town crime kingpin Nafiz Modack, who alleges that the police, including Lincoln, were involved in a plot to have him assassinated.
The suspect who fingers Lincoln for contracting her to organise a hit on an unnamed opponent describes grisly details of how Lincoln preferred his target killed, “on the scene”.
This gung-ho attitude is criminal. It does not accord with the training of a high-ranking police officer.
If Lincoln and everyone else in crime intelligence are guilty as charged, it behoves Police Minister Bheki Cele to rise above partisan leadership and crack the whip: get rid of the rotten apples.
But to do this, Cele and National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole need to be exemplary, and set their differences aside.
Sunday Independent