Cape Town, South Africa – When Patricia Blows heard a senior police official’s explosive allegations against South Africa’s political and law enforcement elite last week, her thoughts went straight to the stalled investigation into her son’s killing nine years ago.

Angelo, an apprentice boilermaker, was about to turn 28 when he was shot in an apparent robbery on a Sunday afternoon in March 2016 while walking home from work in Langlaagte, Johannesburg.

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To this day, the investigation has gone nowhere despite Blows providing the police with evidence they said they lacked, including witness statements she collected herself.

The lack of progress in the case began to make sense last week when the police commissioner in coastal KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, claimed he had uncovered a crime syndicate involving politicians, senior police officers, correctional services officials, prosecutors, the judiciary and businesspeople in his province.

According to Mkhwanazi, speaking at a news conference on July 6, the systemic corruption rises all the way to the country’s police minister, Senzo Mchunu, whom he accused of disbanding a task force set up to investigate political killings in KZN to protect his shady associates.

Like millions of South Africans, Blows was outraged by Mkhwanazi’s allegations – but not entirely surprised.

“I immediately thought of our battle for justice. I just couldn’t find an open door. It still hurts like hell,” said Blows, a community activist from Blackheath on the Cape Flats, a part of Cape Town plagued by violent drug-trafficking gangs.

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“I had fresh hope in Mchunu. Now this? Then doubt drifted in, and I had an overwhelming fear for [Mkhwanazi’s] safety,” Blows said from her suburb on the outskirts of the Cape Flats, where a police station came under attack about a month ago, presumably in retaliation for the arrest of a local crime boss.

‘Hands off Mkhwanazi’

Mkhwanazi’s revelations triggered an outpouring of support from crime-weary South Africans and politicians alike, who almost universally admire his no-nonsense approach to crime. Last month, after a series of police shootouts with criminals, he was quoted as saying he cared more about impact than strategy.

His popularity reflects a national malaise as well as a regional one that is particular to volatile KZN. The province regularly features among the country’s crime hotspots and is notorious for its history of political violence that dates back to the 1980s when the apartheid regime fomented tensions among the Black supporters of the African National Congress (ANC) and its rival Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in an attempt to undermine the planned transition to democracy.

National quarterly statistics for January to March indicated a decrease in violent crime compared with the same quarter in 2024. Murders decreased by 12.4 percent to 5,727, or an average of 64 per day, according to the Institute for Security Studies.

Still, violent crime is a major problem. According to the World Population Review, South Africa has the fifth highest crime index in the world, following Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan and Haiti.

South Africa also ranks 82nd in the world on the corruption perception index compiled by the NGO Transparency International.

In this context, Mkhwanazi has become a hero to many South Africans who are fed up with the government’s failure to address chronic social ills.

Not even an investigation into his conduct in March could dampen the support for Mkhwanazi. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate dropped the case after a “Hands off Mkhwanazi” campaign, which was revived on social media after his July 6 news conference.

Dressed in special operations fatigues and surrounded by armed guards, Mkhwanazi told journalists: “I am combat ready. I will die for this badge. I will not back down.”

Ramaphosa’s legacy at risk

Much to the frustration of many South Africans, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to the unfolding crisis has been in sharp contrast to Mkhwanazi’s gung-ho attitude.

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In a brief and carefully crafted televised address on Sunday, Ramaphosa announced that Mchunu had been placed on special leave and he would establish a judicial commission of inquiry to look into the allegations raised by Mkhwanazi.

Kagiso Pooe, a senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Governance in Johannesburg, was hoping for Mchunu to be suspended or fired and the country’s seemingly compromised security structure to be overhauled, especially after the recent arrest of a senior crime intelligence official and several officers for fraud.

Pooe believes Ramaphosa played it safe to preserve himself and his ANC party, which was forced to form a coalition government with rivals after it failed to secure an outright majority in last year’s general election. It was a historic defeat for Nelson Mandela’s party, which has dominated domestic politics since the democratic era began in 1994.

Before local government elections next year, Pooe believes the last thing Ramaphosa wants is to alienate an ally like Mchunu, who has a strong support base in the highly contested KZN and helped secure Ramaphosa’s presidency in 2017.

“He doesn’t rock the boat. It’s not in his nature,” Pooe said, pointing out that Ramaphosa is determined to accomplish what no president has managed to do since 1994 – complete a second term in office.

“I give the president 33 percent, which is the average score for everything he does,” he said.

Pooe bemoaned the idea of yet another commission of inquiry under Ramaphosa. In May, the president even appointed a commission to investigate the by-product of a previous commission set up in 1996 that failed to deal with apartheid-era crimes. Decades on, more than 100 cases that arose from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have yet to be prosecuted.

The most high-profile commission under Ramaphosa was established shortly after he took office in 2017. The Zondo Commission was meant to investigate corruption that was so deeply entrenched under Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma that it became known as “state capture”.

After millions of dollars and years of highly publicised testimony, the findings of the commission have yet to deliver a major prosecution.

Toyin Adetiba, a professor at the University of Zululand’s Department of Political and International Studies, said Ramaphosa could pay a dear price for failing to act decisively, especially at a time when he is trying to burnish South Africa’s international reputation and fend off the threat of potentially damaging tariffs from the United States.

“Remember, he will soon be out as the president of the country and that of the ANC. The respect that he commands among political leaders across the continent will suffer a setback, and for him to play the role of elder statesperson after leaving office will be a Herculean task as no one will respect his opinion, no matter how important and genuine it might be,” Adetiba said.

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In a strange twist of timing, this crisis comes as the country marks the anniversary of the July 2021 unrest when riots broke out in two of the country’s most populous provinces – KZN and Gauteng – after Zuma’s imprisonment for contempt of court following his refusal to testify before the Zondo Commission.

The leader of the minority party Freedom Front Plus, Pieter Groenewald, blamed the unrest on a failure of the intelligence services. Pooe said Mkhwanazi’s allegations supported the view that the country’s intelligence has been compromised.

“South Africa is literally naked intelligence-wise. Think about it from the perspective of foreign entities and criminals,” Pooe said. “If this [the allegations of corruption] is happening, don’t you think criminals also know that you can take advantage of a country like South Africa?”

As the country processes Ramaphosa’s much-awaited speech in response to Mkhwanazi’s allegations and wonders what is to come, Blows is recovering from the shock of another shooting in her neighbourhood, reported on a community WhatsApp group. This time, it sounded like an automatic weapon was used.

“I seriously pray daily against the high crime. Many parents suffer as I do,” Blows said. “Our lives are controlled by crime.”