Crime-ridden country cannot afford suspicions about its police minister

Sars swoop on tenderpreneur Panganathan ‘Timmy’ Marimuthu raises questions about Bheki Cele’s past dealings

Police minister Bheki Cele talks tough, once famously exhorting police to “shoot the bastards”. He also affects a fashion style to look tough, with sharp suits like 1950s Hollywood-style gangsters and a natty hat that earned him the nickname “Cat In The Hat”. But in a country still fighting raging corruption, how does the police minister’s record stack up? Cele’s two predecessors were fizzles. Nathi Nhleko was Jacob Zuma’s praise-singer, while Fikile Mbalula was, and is, mostly bluster. In a country of violent crime, with an average of only 8% of murder cases actually proceeding to a successful prosecution, we cannot afford to have a third suspect police minister. But this question has arisen sharply again after the SA Revenue Service (Sars) swooped on former policeman, convicted drug dealer and “tenderpreneur” Panganathan “Timmy” Marimuthu, who in the past appears to have had dubious links to Cele.

One serious allegation is that Marimuthu provided funds to Cele after he was fired by Zuma as national police commissioner in 2011. Marimuthu is one of two flashy Durban business people, both up to their necks in scandals, who have been publicly linked with the police minister.

Cele has never responded to reports linking him to these men, but suspicions are reinforced by his inexplicable reluctance to declassify fishy police documents. This is despite an “injunction” to do so from the inspector-general of intelligence, who pointed out that classification is not intended to be used to hide criminality on the part of senior policemen, which the evidence clearly indicates.

Corruption sticks close to Marimuthu. The former apartheid-era policeman escaped a prison sentence for dealing in Mandrax, according to the Jali commission into prison corruption, by paying a bribe of R100,000. This did not prevent him, his wife, son and daughter from later being recruited and handsomely paid by crime intelligence — and then taking part in the wholesale looting of secret intelligence funds.

According to a detailed analysis by the amaBhungane investigative team, this was a ploy by disgraced crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli to keep tabs on Cele on behalf of then president Zuma.

AmaBhungane put to it Cele that “he has told people in private that, when he was down and out, Marimuthu was the only one who put food on his table; we also put the allegation to him that, after he was fired by president Zuma, Marimuthu diverted a portion of his fees from crime intelligence for Cele’s benefit.”

Cele did not respond.

The other dubious Durban tycoon with whom Cele has been associated is the politically connected Thoshan Panday, under investigation by the Hawks for vastly inflated contracts with the police totalling R60m during the 2010 Soccer World Cup. One R26m contract was to provide accommodation for police in KwaZulu-Natal. Never advertised, it was signed off by Cele.

There is nothing wrong with police mixing with dodgy characters to garner intelligence. When this involves putting “food on the table”, however, as has been alleged about Cele in print, it is an allegation the police minister should answer squarely if we are to have faith in him as a crime and corruption fighter.

But in this strange world of police vs police, and spy vs spy, things get very murky.

For example, Marimuthu is reported as having made a secret recording in 2010 to blackmail a top Sars official to stop a probe into his tax affairs.

More recently, a 2019 recording, allegedly made by crime intelligence, has been circulating among reporters. It appears to be a phone call from Marimuthu to Cele. “Timmy” asks why the minister no longer contacts him. (“Have we done something to offend you?”) Cele replies, seemingly irritated, that everyone in SA knows he now has a busy job. Marimuthu proceeds to tell the police minister of devious political manoeuvres involving a slush fund of R2bn, and in the end the pair vaguely agree to meet.

The police minister, a survivor of bitter battles in the ANC, is no stranger to the dark arts of misinformation. But the question remains: why would he deploy extreme deception to scuttle the reappointment of the man successfully tackling our most corrupt policemen? Cele was dead set against Robert McBride being reappointed for another term as executive head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), the body tasked with policing the police. Initially, Cele announced that he would not renew the contract. McBride pointed out that Ipid, as an independent body, must be insulated from politicians and that Cele’s decision was therefore unlawful. The high court in Pretoria duly ruled that the decision should rightfully be taken by the parliamentary police portfolio committee.

This is when Cele played his Machiavellian trump card: the fabricated complaints of a suspended, untrustworthy Ipid employee were circulated to ANC committee members. The accuser was someone who had a record of transgressions and faced several disciplinary hearings. Worst of all, this man had treacherously failed to pass on information of a plot about a fake R45m police tender, where the funds were to be used to bribe ANC delegates to vote for the Zuma faction at the 2017 ANC elective conference.

The minister must have known all this when he lobbied the ANC MPs with his false dossier. The same man concocted a comic book conspiracy claiming McBride, the DA and AfriForum were plotting a treasonous mini-coup. It seems Cele, who might be expected to have some discernment, cynically and deceitfully whispered a similar crazed, blatantly false conspiracy into the ears of pliant ANC members on the portfolio committee.

One opposition MP on the committee, Phillip Mhlongo of the EFF, told me: “I went to see Cele about something else, and he told me McBride was working with foreign agents, selling secrets. It is beyond doubt that’s what Cele also told the ANC MPs on the committee. McBride was vilified for nothing, crucified by his own MPs.”

Another opposition MP on the committee, Dianne Kohler Barnard of the DA, points out that six months earlier the ANC’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) study group had pronounced itself “pleased” with the progress of Ipid under McBride.

She was “desperately ashamed” of the ANC MPs turning viciously on McBride. This was a ploy, she believes, “about discrediting Mr McBride so that all he will reveal to the state capture commission would be discounted”.

In view of those sinister deceptions it appears Cele was concerned that McBride, as head of Ipid, was going to expose and bring down a raft of corrupt senior policemen. Given the grave allegations about this minister’s past questionable associations, did Cele conclude that the real corruption fighter had to be thwarted?

Along with his reluctance to declassify possibly incriminating documents, his actions place our police minister in the dock.

Bheki Cele needs to come clean.

● Rostron is a journalist and author. His latest book is ‘Robert McBride: The Struggle Continues’.