SAPS Major General promoted to Hawks despite being implicated in sex video and underworld meetings

17 Sep 2024

An SA Police Service (SAPS) Major General, who sent explicit messages to a police WhatsApp group, was implicated in bullying a senior female colleague and allegedly met with underworld figures, has been promoted.

Major General Patrick Mbotho has been appointed as divisional commissioner for national priority offences at the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI, or the Hawks), Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Nomthandazo Mbambo confirmed to Daily Maverick this week.

He will officially take up the position on 1 October as “all processes as prescribed in the National Instructions have been followed and adhered to”, said Mbambo. Mbotho’s annual salary package is R2-million.

He was the Western Cape deputy provincial commissioner of detectives when he posted explicit sexual content on a police WhatsApp group in 2017. After this, Mbotho was redeployed to head the DPCI in North West.

Nafiz Modack connection

In May 2017, News24 reported that Mbotho had been present at two meetings at a luxury Cape Town hotel with underworld figure Nafiz Modack along with an SAPS colleague, Northern Cape Provincial Commissioner Risimati Shivuri.

Mbotho denied that he had met with Modack at the hotel.

SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Novela Potelwa at the time said Mbotho had summoned Modack to his office after Modack had lodged a complaint against the police.

The complaint, she said, had fallen outside the jurisdiction of the Western Cape and was directed elsewhere.

Modack and 14 co-accused collectively face 124 charges, including murder, attempted murder, corruption, gangsterism, extortion, the illegal interception of communications, racketeering, money laundering and contravention of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.

He also faces allegations that he orchestrated the assassination of Anti-Gang Unit member Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear in 2020. He has denied this.

Bullying colleagues

In 2017, the then head of the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit, Brigadier Sonja Harri, the Western Cape’s highest-ranking female police officer, wrote in desperation to the then minister of police, Bheki Cele; the then national commissioner, Khehla Sitole; and the Western Cape commissioner, Kombinkosi Jula, about Mbotho’s conduct.

Read more: Sexual offences unit head tells Cele of bullying and humiliation by senior officer

She wrote that Mbotho had embarked on “a sustained campaign marked by incidents of humiliation, belittling, undermining my authority, and compromising my dignity and psychological wellbeing”.

During her 30-year career with the SAPS, Harri was instrumental in solving several high-profile sexual crimes, including the brutal murder of Anene Booysen in 2013. Mbotho had brought charges against Harri on minor procedural matters, including that she had missed a meeting.

Mbotho’s reply to Daily Maverick about the allegations at the time was a short, “What I do best is to fight crime.”

Back in 2015, the then acting national police commissioner, Khomotso Phahlane, made several appointments to the SAPS Western Cape top structure, sidelining the then deputy provincial commissioner of crime detection, Major General Jeremy Vearey, as well as the then Western Cape Crime Intelligence head, Major General Peter Jacobs.

Harri was redeployed from her post as the Western Cape head of Crime Investigation Services to be the provincial head of the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit. Harri said at the time that, unlike Vearey and Jacobs, she had not challenged her redeployment.

She said her life changed after Vearey was illegally removed from his position by Phahlane in September 2016.

“From the outset, General Mbotho adopted a hostile attitude towards me and my work. He treated me in an arbitrary, disrespectful and downright abusive manner, which culminated in what I regard as the spurious charges brought against me.”

Mbotho’s past conduct and the serious allegations against him appear not to have deterred the panel from appointing him as the most suitable candidate who applied for the critical position at the DPCI. DM

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Nafiz Modack connection

Bullying colleagues