In 2021 former national police boss Khehla Sitole appointed Semakaleng Manamela to lead cops in Mpumalanga as their new top cop, replacing Mondli Zuma whose term ended in that year.
A battle is brewing in the leadership structure of the South African police service in Mpumalanga, with some senior cops inside the institution accused of being protectors and beneficiaries of complicated criminal gangs – where provincial police boss Lieutenant-General Semakaleng Manamela is said to be coming face to face with the real core of systematic police corruption..
Manamela was appointed to the position in July 2021, becoming the first female cop leader in Mpumalanga – only to find out that she has taken up a very difficult job and some of her counterparts are working with criminals for extra cash.
Senior police sources claim that Manamela is lashing the whip on criminally involved senior cops who sources say have been “distracted” by “her way of doing things” – where she found out that some of her members are actually making money as people belonging to groups doing crime and in particular, organised crime.
At least six senior cops in the province are being investigated by Manamela’s office for a series of criminal activities involving illegal mining in the Witbank area and amongst them is a member of the NPA as well as powerful politicians.
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013NEWS has learnt from a string of different police sources who belong in various camps in the divided Mpumalanga police structure that the battles are so grave that each and every senior cop is out to protect their skins, whether it means the death of others or the loss of careers…
“You must know that being a cop is not as easy like you are for an example a petrol attendant or something, especially when you are in the leadership structure,” one of the senior police sources said Thursday evening 15 September 2022 when they spoke to the 013NEWS reporter over a WhatsApp call.
“There are some of us who are more powerful than others of us and who report somewhere else, and to be able to fight such you need serious courage, and you know your life is always in danger”.
Manamela, once a deputy provincial police leader in the province, took power in July 2021 after Mondli Zuma’s term ended in that year.
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Bigger troubles for Manamela started early this year when the national government established a special task team to crack down on illegal mining syndicates across the country and she allegedly found a criminal web, that included cops and seriously powerful ANC politicians who act in concert with cops to illegally extract coal from disused mines in Witbank. The cops allegedly live a lavish lifestyle and own some of the best homes in Pretoria, Nelspruit, Sandton and Durban, contrary to their state salaries.
Manamela has since arrested a prosecutor together with the six senior cops, who among them is a station commander in one of the two police stations in Witbank, on crimes of being involved in illegal mining or using state resources to hide crime.
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The seven had already appeared at the Witbank Magistrates Court and are charged with theft of coal, corruption and money-laundering and are due back in court as the NPA is busy putting together remaining pieces of evidence.
013NEWS has seen the names of the arrested cops as well as the NPA member and how they got arrested by their colleagues serving in the illegal mining task team in July 2022.
One of the six senior cops, on the day of arrest, was followed by un-uniformed members of the task team after he allegedly went to the house of one of the illegal mining kingpins in eMalahleni to collect R500 000 stashed in a bag, and was nailed shortly after leaving the house in Witbank’s Highveld Park suburb.
A warrant officer by rank, the cop was cornered by his colleagues around the Highveld Park area but he decided to dash straight, a shoot-out ensued with him shooting at the cops who were trying to stop him.
Provincial police spokesman Brigadier Selvy Mohlala said they picked up intelligence that the cop “clinched a deal in a coal mine around Witbank area.” As a result, another top cop – a brigadier by rank – was also arrested and charged with corruption.
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“You wont believe it how difficult it is to run the system at a leadership level, especially when you are a woman. You really won’t believe it. It’s hard. But what else can you do? It’s what we chose,” a high-ranking cop, a colonel sympathetic to Manamela told the 013NEWS reporter.
“For an example, you could one day wake up and receive a call from a very powerful leader of the ANC and be told things that you thought are secrets of the service and you wonder who leaked that information out to people that are not even police, and you must then begin to worry about your safety,” the colonel said Saturday morning 17 September 2022.
The start of the attacks on Manamela
Manamela’s camp is currently reeling over a perceived smear campaign that they believe is aimed at removing her from office since her crackdown on internal corruption and malfeasance in the province began.
For example the camp is worried that her opponents in the service are now beginning to lure journalists to cement a character assassination on her in the battle for the survival between good and bad, just less than a year since she took power.
On Facebook, disgraced former Sowetan journalist Riot Hlatshwayo is currently spreading information discrediting Manamela – accusing her of “abusing her powers” and of being “unlawfully” showered with things by various police stations in Mpumalanga when she was being welcomed as the new police boss in November 2021.
These items are estimated to be over R100 000 and they allegedly also include a furniture voucher, but Hlatshwayo’s story has one problem in that it omits that previous commissioners were also welcomed in the same way and how for an example R200 000 was spent on Mondli Zuma’s farewell as he was leaving the Mpumalanga police service, excluding the alleged R330 000 that the SAPS spent on his welcoming in 2016.
“Like I was telling you, being a woman in the system of government in South Africa is sometimes very difficult. There are people who actually think you are weak because you are a woman, and I can tell you that her only sin was to be transparent and cracked down on crime, and she got in trouble with her colleagues who have been with her for many years in the SAPS but today we know they report somewhere else, and you won’t believe the division that has been caused to the Mpumalanga SAPS by very greedy and corrupt men,” the colonel told 013NEWS reporter.
(edited by MLM)
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