Speaker, one of the most embarrassing and shocking stories published in the media recently is the story of a certain Musa Khumalo, who escaped from police custody in Johannesburg, allegedly with the help of a warder. After his escape, he fled to KwaZulu-Natal, where he introduced himself as Brigadier Musa Khumalo and started working at various police stations in that province. Surprisingly, this bogus brigadier was praised for his success rate in the province, where he allegedly helped the police to recover more than 40 stolen and hijacked cars in recent months.
It was only when the Johannesburg police circulated the picture of an alleged killer who escaped from custody that alarm bells began to ring. Nobody seems to know how he got involved with the police in KwaZulu-Natal without security clearance.
The ACDP finds it deplorable that a man who is described by some police officers as a hard-core criminal could infiltrate the police so easily and be praised for the great success he allegedly had. How is it possible for an alleged hard-core criminal to infiltrate the KwaZulu-Natal provincial headquarters, be allowed to visit several police stations in northern KwaZulu-Natal, allegedly in an official police car, without the Crime Intelligence Unit becoming aware of the infiltration?
The ACDP believes that the Musa Khumalo saga should be thoroughly investigated. We want to know who issued him with a police uniform, cars and the other resources he used to do what the police say was a sterling job as a police brigadier.
Some of us remember that when Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi was acting National Police Commissioner, he was reported to have said that almost half of the Crime Intelligence Unit was corrupt and that he planned to root out all the officers involved in the rot. Unfortunately he was transferred before he could do so.
We want to know whether these allegations of corruption in the Crime Intelligence Unit are being investigated or whether police management is happy with a unit that is tainted by serious allegations of corruption.