Suspended Deputy National Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya has questioned his “weird” exclusion from the work of the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT), despite being a senior in the South African Police Service (SAPS) and having top secret security clearance.
Sibiya made the remarks before Parliament’s ad hoc committee probing widespread corruption in the SAPS on Monday, labelling the task team’s structure and operations as “very weird” and “deeply concerning.”
“I’m the deputy national commissioner responsible for detectives, forensic services, and intelligence-led policing,” Sibiya told MPs.
“If I hold top secret clearance, why can’t I be entrusted with knowing what this team is doing? What is so secret that I’m not allowed to know?”
The PKTT was formed to investigate a wave of politically linked assassinations, particularly in KZN.
But Sibiya’s testimony raised alarms about the opaque chain of command, with the task team reportedly bypassing standard investigative oversight.
Despite being staffed largely by detectives, Sibiya revealed that the unit reported directly to Crime Intelligence via Lt-Gen. Dumisani Khumalo and then to the provincial commissioner.
“This task team was working with a structure of only about five people who actually knew what was going on — the Minister, Khumalo, [Lt-Gen. Nhlanhla] Mkhwanazi, the National Commissioner [Fannie Masemola] and to a lesser extent Lt-Gen. [Godfrey] Lebeya,” said Sibiya.
Sibiya, appointed to his post in July 2023, said he was never formally briefed on the task team’s operations, even though it allegedly fell under his division’s mandate.
“This is an investigation function. When you talk about murder cases, you’re talking about crime detection. That’s detectives’ work,” he said.
The PKTT was disbanded abruptly in late 2024 — a move now at the centre of fierce political and legal controversy.
It has widely been speculated that Sibiya played a role in the disbandment, an allegation he did not directly address in Parliament but implicitly challenged by questioning the task team’s secretive configuration.
Deputy Commissioners do not have unilateral authority to manage or disband special police units like the PKTT.
Recent testimony and public reports confirmed that the PKTT’s operational control falls under the national commissioner.
The man who officially called for the unit’s disbandment was the suspended Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu.
In a letter dated December 2024, Mchunu instructed National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola to shut down the PKTT.
Why Mchunu made this decision remained unclear, but the fallout has been severe, with critics accusing SAPS leadership of undermining efforts to address politically motivated killings.
But according to the letter, Mchunu said the PKTT did not add any value anymore.
Sibiya stressed that the PKTT was never a permanent structure and operated outside conventional SAPS investigative protocols.
“It’s acceptable that the provincial commissioner oversees provincial policing, but when murder investigations are happening through a special task team, it should be aligned under detectives,” he argued.
Meanwhile, Mkhwanazi accused rogue political forces of sabotaging the fight against political killings and claimed Mchunu wasn’t even the real author of the letter that disbanded the elite task team investigating them.
Politics
