The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has issued a strong condemnation of comments made by KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, describing his remarks as an “attack” on press freedom and the constitutionally protected right to a free media.
Mkhwanazi made the comments on Tuesday night (7 October) during a sitting of a parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating his whistleblowing allegations. In a departure from his witness statement, he called on both the committee and the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence to direct state security agencies to carry out a counterintelligence investigation into the South African media.
On Wednesday, during the second day of the ad hoc committee meeting, he repeated and intensified his stance, calling for the imprisonment of journalists and “heavy penalties” for those who make reporting errors. “They must sit in Pollsmoor for a while,” he said, referring to the high-security prison near Cape Town.
Sanef, in a statement, remarked that this echoed tactics used during apartheid to suppress the truth and silence journalists. “This is a chilling attack on the constitutional rights to a free press,” the organisation said, urging national police commissioner Fannie Masemola and police minister Firoz Cachalia to publicly reject the comments as “an unwarranted and unsubstantiated overreach of his powers”.
Background to the controversy
Mkhwanazi’s comments come amid media reports on alleged misconduct within the police, particularly concerning findings from the Inspector-General of Intelligence (IGI). The IGI report reportedly recommends criminal and disciplinary action against Masemola for authorising the purchase of properties valued at a collective R120 million by the Crime Intelligence unit.
It also recommends charges against suspended crime intelligence head Major-General Dumisani Khumalo and suspended chief financial officer Major-General Philani Lushaba for alleged gross financial misconduct.
During his testimony, Mkhwanazi named journalists from Sunday Times, City Press and News24 as targets for investigation, claiming that the IGI report cited by News24 was classified. He insisted that the secrecy of Crime Intelligence operations was “sacrosanct” and questioned whether the unit should be scrutinised in open parliamentary sessions. Even if corruption was alleged, he argued, such matters should be handled “in secret” to avoid “destabilising the country.”
Press freedom under threat
Sanef’s statement countered that the media’s right to protect sources has been upheld by South African courts, including in Bosasa vs Basson (2012) and SABC vs Avusa (2010).
The organisation said any attempt to investigate or intimidate journalists and their sources amounted to “tactics designed to shield the corrupt and obstruct legitimate public-interest journalism.”
Sanef called on Cachalia and Masemola to take an unequivocal stand against any effort to undermine press freedom, target whistleblowers or conceal corruption from the public.
“Failure to do so,” Sanef warned, “will mark the destruction of any semblance of democratic process in South Africa and move us closer to a state where unchecked power cannot be questioned.”
