Resignations Will Not Restore Public Trust in SAPS. Accountability Will.

By Themba Khumalo

An old trick in South African public life keeps working because we let it. Resign before the disciplinary hearing runs its course. Leave before the evidence is tested. Hand back the office, slip out of the building and wait for the country to lose interest. Usually, it obliges.

This time it must not.

On 12 October, Lieutenant-General Shadrack Sibiya resigned from the South African Police Service (SAPS) shortly after the disciplinary proceedings against him began. SAPS labelled his departure a dishonourable discharge. Fine. But a label is not a reckoning. Leaving office is not accountability. Vacating a post is not justice. And when a disciplinary process is cut off by the very person at its centre, the questions press harder, not softer.

A senior police officer’s departure should never be mistaken for the end of the questions he leaves behind. In the SAPS, where public trust depends on the integrity of investigations and the impartial enforcement of the law, the stakes are far too high for resignation to become an escape route from scrutiny.

Nearly two weeks on, the resignation is no longer the point. The point is whether SAPS will finally face the rot in its ranks, or wave another senior figure out the door and carry on as before.

The allegations linked to Sibiya, arising in part from the Madlanga Commission, concern interference in criminal investigations, questionable relationships with people implicated in criminality and the possible compromise of confidential policing information.

These are not minor administrative blemishes. They strike at the one thing a police service exists to do: protect the public, preserve evidence and go after criminals without fear, favour or interference. If the people paid to enforce the law are suspected of bending it for the powerful, the damage does not stop with them. It eats at the credibility of every investigation and leaves the public asking whether the police are chasing criminals or looking after the well-connected.

Start with the disbandment of the KwaZulu-Natal Political Killings Task Team and the handling of 121 criminal case dockets. The probe around these dockets cannot be left to gather dust because an officer tied to the controversy has cleared his desk. Every docket holds allegations that need proper investigation, victims who want justice and, in some cases, families waiting for answers that may never come if the evidence has been compromised.

What happened to those 121 dockets? Who made the decisions? On what grounds? Was investigative work obstructed, and did anyone benefit from the disruption? These questions cannot be buried under bureaucratic language or brushed off with assurances that the matter is receiving attention. The public wants findings, explanations and consequences where wrongdoing is established. That requires an independent review to establish the status of every docket, determine whether investigations were compromised and spell out what is needed to put things right.

The allegations involving ‘businessman’ Vusimuzi Cat Matlala sharpen the point. The public is entitled to know whether relationships between police officials and people implicated in criminality compromised policing decisions or let confidential information leak.

In plain terms: was the machinery of law enforcement put to work for something other than justice?

Those questions must be settled by evidence, not rumour. But the need for evidence must not become a handy excuse for institutional paralysis. Investigate. Examine the records. Question everyone who knows something, whatever their rank, influence, or connections.

Sibiya also faces separate criminal charges, including allegations of rape. Those charges belong in the proper legal process, and the presumption of innocence must be respected. Allegations are not convictions, and nobody should be declared guilty before a court has tested the evidence. But that principle does not oblige the country to suspend its scrutiny of the police service, or to accept an official’s departure as the end of legitimate questions. Due process and accountability are not enemies. What cannot be tolerated is the law being waved about as a shield against scrutiny by the very institution charged with enforcing it.

Nor can Sibiya’s exit be read in isolation from the wider questions about senior command in SAPS. Major-General Lesetja Senona, Brigadier Rachel Matjeng, Major-General Richard Shibiri and Major-General Feroz Khan also need proper examination. Their circumstances differ, and each case must be judged on its own evidence. But the public has every right to ask what these controversies say about oversight, leadership, and the service’s appetite for confronting misconduct at the top.

Who knew what? Who acted? Who looked away? Who had the authority to step in and did not? And who, if anyone, used their position to shield people who should have been under investigation?

None of this can be answered by a senior officer slipping out of the door, and everyone declaring the matter closed. If misconduct was enabled by a wider web of relationships and loyalties, one man’s exit changes little. The people left behind simply learn to be more careful, while the structures that allowed the problem to grow sit untouched.

Accountability that stops at the most visible person in a scandal is not accountability. It is damage control.

The Madlanga Commission has dragged serious allegations into public view. Its work will count for nothing if its recommendations become one more pile of paper that officials praise in public and ignore in practice. South Africans have sat through enough inquiries that expose failure, only for the machinery of government to grind on, apparently undisturbed.

The Commission Recommendations Task Team (CRTT) therefore carries a responsibility that announcements and administrative updates will not discharge. Its work must be transparent, measurable, and open to public scrutiny. South Africans should be able to see which recommendations have been accepted, what is being implemented, what is still outstanding, and who is responsible for the delay. That means clear lines of responsibility, credible timelines, and regular public reporting. Where reform is needed in management, oversight, intelligence handling, or criminal investigations, it must be carried out, not filed under future commitments. If progress stalls, say why. If officials fail in their duties, there must be consequences.

The review of the 121 dockets belongs inside that effort. It cannot shrink into counting files, producing a report and congratulating everyone on a job supposedly done. The objective is justice, and justice demands action.

Then there are the people who make exposure possible. Whistle-blowers, investigators and witnesses must be protected. Police officers who expose misconduct should not have to choose between doing their jobs honestly and risking retaliation. Witnesses must be able to give information without fearing that the details will find their way back to the people they are accusing. Without credible protection and independent oversight, those best placed to expose wrongdoing may stay silent, and those who profit from that silence keep their influence.

Whistle-blowers are not a nuisance to be managed. Often they are the only reason misconduct comes to light at all. Protecting them is no favour. It is the price of being taken seriously.

SAPS must also stop mistaking personnel changes for institutional reform. Swapping one senior officer for another does not change a culture in which people may believe that rank, political connections or loyalty to the right individuals will protect them from consequences. The test is not whether another appointment has been made or another disciplinary announcement issued. The test is whether SAPS can stop interference in investigations, protect confidential information, identify compromised officials and act against wrongdoing even when the people implicated sit in powerful positions. If it cannot, these departures amount to little more than rearranging the furniture in a house that is still on fire.

Spare a thought for the officers who keep serving honourably in difficult and often dangerous conditions. They are expected to investigate serious crime, face armed criminals and win the trust of communities with every reason to demand better. Their work is dragged down every time a senior official is caught up in a scandal. They deserve leaders who protect the integrity of their work, not the reputations of individuals, and a service where misconduct is confronted instead of quietly managed and nobody is considered too senior to answer for what they did.

Which brings us back to Sibiya. His resignation does not settle the allegations against him, answer the questions about the 121 dockets or remove the need to examine the conduct of other officials. It must mark the start of a serious accountability process, not the end of an awkward chapter, and it must never become a chance for anyone who facilitated or concealed wrongdoing to slip quietly out of the spotlight.

The herculean task now facing SAPS is to show that it can investigate itself without protecting its own, follow the evidence wherever it goes and dismantle the networks that undermine lawful policing. It will be uncomfortable. It may implicate people who would prefer the country move on. That is exactly why it must be done.

The Madlanga Commission’s work will not be judged by how many senior officers resigned, retired or left under a cloud. It will be judged by whether criminal networks are dismantled, whether wrongdoing is punished and whether public confidence in policing is restored.

The question is no longer whether Sibiya has left. He has. The question is whether SAPS will use this moment to confront the rot and rebuild an institution whose authority depends on public trust. If it fails, the message will be unmistakable: in the upper ranks of the police service, leaving office is easier than answering for what happened there.

In the SAPS, accountability must pursue the officer as he heads for the door. It must not stop at the door. It must follow him through it, and keep following until it has an answer.