South Africa

Cocaine, a gun and secret service looting charges — the multiple Crime Intelligence scandals

27 Mar 2025

The country’s Crime Intelligence arena has always courted controversy. Recent ructions involve certain cops accusing colleagues of unfairly targeting them, which points to broader battles in the SAPS.

Police officers linked to South Africa’s critical Crime Intelligence unit have accused colleagues of unfairly targeting them – and the unit itself is now being portrayed as a victim of misinformation.

This makes it very difficult to decipher the real state of a unit, meant to be proactively gathering information about crime, that already operates under a certain level of secrecy.

But even the South African Police Service (SAPS) has acknowledged that its Crime Intelligence environment is shaky.

Several scandals stretching over many years point to how the unit has never been stable, and the volatility is often attributed to elements in the state.

State Capture context

The Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, which focused mostly on corruption accusations stemming from when Jacob Zuma was president, between 2009 and 2018, heard about several dodgy issues tied to Crime Intelligence.

These included discredited intelligence reports from the unit and irregular recruitments.

Read more: Zuma’s legacy: The build-up to breaking down Crime Intelligence

A section on the State Capture commission’s findings from 2022 said: “The evidence… leaves no doubt that for an extended period at the beginning of the present century, corruption, nepotism, theft and fraud particularly in relation to the Secret Service Account… administered from within the branch of SAPS known as Crime Intelligence… was conducted on such a scale that it can justly be described as looting”.

Richard Mdluli, who was appointed the country’s Crime Intelligence boss in the same year that Zuma became president, is now a convicted criminal.

He remains accused of looting the secret account and is expected to go on trial next month.

The cocaine case and Feroz Khan

Another high-profile case involving accusations relating to the abuse of secret service funds involves Major General Feroz Khan who heads Counter and Security Intelligence.

Earlier this week, Daily Maverick reported that Khan had cleared in this overall saga tied to a 2021 cocaine interception in Johannesburg.

According to Khan, he was called to the scene of that drug bust, where four suspects, including two police officers, were subsequently arrested.

The situation flipped because the case against the suspects was withdrawn. Khan was subsequently accused of defeating the ends of justice and bringing the SAPS into disrepute in relation to his presence at the cocaine interception.

Read more: Ongoing cocaine Crime Intelligence scandal fuels suspicions of police involvement in global drug trafficking

But Khan in turn accused his boss, national Crime Intelligence head Dumisani Khumalo, of unfairly targeting him.

Khan said Khumalo used the 2021 cocaine bust to try to get rid of him because of his investigations, with possible links to Khumalo, into the abuse of secret service funds.

Police bosses, via court processes, denied that Khan was being dubiously targeted.

Daily Maverick reported this week that the National Prosecuting Authority said the 2021 cocaine case, at the centre of the Khan spat with his bosses, had been referred for further investigation, which means the matter has not yet concluded and charges could still be reinstated.

The gun and Mzwandile Tiyo

Another Crime Intelligence scandal is linked to South Africa’s gangsterism capital, the Western Cape.

Mzwandile Tiyo was head of Crime Intelligence in the province.

He was recently forced out of the police service in a saga he says was intentionally orchestrated against him.

Read more: The tavern, ‘witch-hunt’ and double axing of Mzwandile Tiyo — inside another Crime Intelligence scandal

Daily Maverick previously reported that Tiyo was initially fired from the SAPS in August 2024, which he challenged.

He was reinstated into the SAPS in November last year, but was dismissed again in January 2025.

He now faces criminal charges relating to allegations that he left a firearm unattended in a vehicle in November 2023 – the weapon was subsequently stolen.

Tiyo also faces accusations of defeating the administration of justice.

Read more: ‘Double axed’ Western Cape crime intelligence boss Mzwandile Tiyo summoned to court in gun theft negligence saga

Earlier this month he made his first appearance in the Wynberg Magistrates’ Court in Cape Town.

He is expected to be back in the dock in May.

Tiyo’s lawyer Ian Levitt has referred to the scandal as an orchestrated plot: “The conduct of the SAPS towards [my client] has been nothing but a political witch-hunt, and their actions will be vigorously challenged through the appropriate forums”.

The corruption accusations and Peter Jacobs

The Tiyo saga is connected to another national Crime Intelligence controversy.

Before Tiyo was appointed to head the unit in the Western Cape, Lieutenant General Peter Jacobs had filled that provincial position.

Jacobs was abruptly transferred in 2016 in what was to become another policing scandal, creating the vacancy that Tiyo filled.

After his controversial transfer, Jacobs was promoted in March 2018 to national Crime Intelligence head.

Read more: Top cop Peter Jacobs wins yet another court battle in disciplinary war with boss Khehla Sitole

Things did not go smoothly.

In December 2020, Jacobs was suspended – along with a few other Crime Intelligence officers – over allegations of personal protective equipment procurement irregularities involving the secret service account, reportedly totalling nearly R1-million.

The following year, Jacobs’ suspension was lifted, but instead of being allowed to return to the post of national Crime Intelligence head, he was told to return as Inspectorate head.

In an affidavit on the matter, Jacobs said he felt he was being targeted because of protected disclosures he had made relating to corruption within the police service, including “wide-scale” corruption in Crime Intelligence involving millions of rands.

The transfer of Jacobs from the post of national Crime Intelligence head in 2021 paved the way for Dumisani Khumalo to eventually fill the position.

But things have also not been going smoothly for him – the case involving Khan points directly to this.

‘Resisting reform’

Earlier this month, a SAPS presentation shared in Parliament also provided some insight into the environment Khumalo heads.

The presentation reiterated that the Crime Intelligence unit had been weakened over several years and there had been repeated accusations of lawbreaking.

“Attempts to revive the Division were made several times, but met with resistance because those that are unlawfully benefiting would obviously not support the changes,” it said.

The presentation said that when Khumalo was announced as the new Crime Intelligence head in January 2023, the unit “was found to be still characterised by the misuse of crime intelligence methodologies and resources which was still affecting [its]performance level[s]”.

Several issues had been identified to improve Crime Intelligence.

Fake news and reality

These included removing state vehicles, redistributing them at an operational level and enforcing consequence management among senior officers.

“These decisions were not supported by some in Senior Management level which made it difficult to implement and achieve the desired results,” the presentation said.

“Misinformation through the media [is] used after each of these decisions are taken.”

Read more: Crime Intelligence target of social media fake news, but Parliament hears unit also like ‘a mafia’

All this combined – from what emerged via the State Capture commission, the recent accusations involving Crime Intelligence officers, to what surfaced in Parliament earlier this month – means that the overall situation in Crime Intelligence has been highly problematic for about two decades.

It has repeatedly involved accusations of lawbreaking and police officers stating they have been targeted for nefarious reasons.

The SAPS is now taking the official stance that the Crime Intelligence unit itself is the target of misinformation that is being spread in possible retaliation for attempts to clean it up. DM

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