SAPS political interference started at ANC’s 2007 conference, Phahlane reveals
Former acting Police Commissioner Khomotso Phahlane on Wednesday told Parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating police corruption that political interference in the police started at the African National Congress (ANC)’s 52nd national conference in Polokwane.
“ Political interference has been prevalent in the South African Police Service, and it became more prevalent following the 2007 Polokwane Conference where many of these things that lead to where you are taking me to happened because from there on, we started seeing practices that were not the norm. I am the last person following a submission to Cabinet. Everyone else that was appointed after my time that process did not follow the Cabinet process,” he said.
Phahlane also told members of parliament (MPs) of a plot to have him removed.
“The attack directed at me by Robert Robert McBride and Paul O’Sullivan and their sustained campaign through the media both print and electronic bears testimony to their control of individual journalists whom they weaponised against me. A propaganda machinery unleashed against me by McBride and O’Sullivan was spearheaded by the select group of journalists whom I know by the way and I will name them here if need be. Marianne Thamm is one of those people. Who else? The late Karima Brown, she is one of those people. Abraham Mashego is one of those people. Barry Bateman is one of those people.”
Phahlane told the committee that his dismissal by the then Minister Fikile Mbalula was unlawful and he’s still fighting it in court.
In an explosive press briefing in July 2025, KwaZulu-Natal’s top cop, Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi made damning and alarming revelations, accusing Mchunu of interference in policing operations and of shutting down the political killings task team unit just as it was uncovering links between a powerful drug cartel and high-ranking politicians, police officers, and prosecutors.
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