Mchunu, Cele Evidence Underscores SA's Crisis of Truth

Clyde N.S. Ramalaine

When Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee convened to interrogate allegations of political interference and criminal infiltration within the South African Police Service (SAPS), it was expected to be a moment of national reckoning.

The inquiry, triggered by KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s explosive accusations, sought to determine whether syndicates and political networks had compromised the state’s ability to combat political killings and corruption.

Yet, as the testimonies of Bheki Cele and Senzo Mchunu unfolded, what emerged was not clarity but contradiction, a spectacle of half-truths, evasions, a sense of ego-tripping, and vanishing evidence that left the Committee and the public with more questions than answers.

Both men, one a former Minister of Police and the other his successor, entered the chamber as political heavyweights expected to steady a faltering narrative of accountability. Instead, their accounts veered between denial and contradiction, exposing the deep fissures of mistrust and expediency defining South Africa’s security governance. Beneath the procedural polish, their testimonies reflected a state apparatus struggling to defend both its integrity and its truth.

From a political theory perspective, their performances illustrate what Hannah Arendt termed the banality of untruth, a bureaucratised erosion of truth that becomes systemic rather than incidental.

Max Weber’s notion of bureaucratic pathology also resonates here: officials prioritising institutional survival over moral accountability. The contradictions, evasions, and circular reasoning that coloured their statements point not to isolated lapses but to a broader crisis of political ethics. In such a climate, legitimacy rests not on verifiable truth but on the management of perception.

Testimony becomes performance, and transparency becomes theatre, alienating citizens from the moral core of democratic governance. Having seen how these testimonies collapsed into confusion, it becomes essential to unpack the key contradictions that reveal the erosion of executive coherence itself.

The Crisis of Contradiction

Central to the inquiry is the disbandment of the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT), a specialist unit investigating political assassinations in KwaZulu-Natal. Mchunu defended dissolving it on 31 December 2024, citing “duplication,” budget constraints, and an updated organogram.

Cele, however, countered that only the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), and by extension the President, had such authority, insisting the IMC had resolved not to dissolve the PKTT.

This contradiction strikes at the heart of executive accountability. If Cele is correct, Mchunu acted ultra vires, beyond his ministerial mandate. If Mchunu is right, Cele misrepresented the IMC’s position. Both cannot be true. The Committee’s failure to reconcile these divergent versions underscores dysfunction in ministerial oversight.

The Vanishing Evidence

Further eroding Mchunu’s credibility was his claim that he possessed a recording proving Mkhwanazi had threatened him. Yet, when pressed to produce it, he admitted the alleged threat occurred before recording began, effectively nullifying his claim. What was meant to vindicate him instead exposed a pattern of evasion, emblematic of a political culture that weaponises allegation without accountability.

Cele fared little better. He acknowledged knowing businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, linked to criminal networks and tenders, but could not recall the date or context of their meeting. Delivered with nonchalance, the admission undermined his supposed vigilance as a guardian of law enforcement.

In a political climate saturated with suspicion, such forgetfulness reads less as innocence than as selective amnesia. Beyond these lapses lies a deeper concern: the entanglement between political office and private interest, where proximity to controversy has become normalised.

Conflicts of Interest and Credibility

Both ministers’ proximity to controversial figures taints their credibility. Mchunu denied ties to Matlala and another businessman, Brown Mogotsi, yet MPs confronted him with evidence suggesting contact.

His Chief of Staff’s residence being searched in connection with the inquiry further compounded the perception of a compromised ministry. Cele’s admitted familiarity with Matlala placed him uncomfortably close to individuals under investigation by the institution he once led.

This is not a question of casual association, but of ethical erosion, the blurring of boundaries between oversight and complicity. When senior officials engage freely with those suspected of undermining state integrity, public trust disintegrates. These blurred boundaries set the stage for Mchunu’s most glaring inconsistency: the tangled tale of an imprisoned man’s affidavit.

The Affidavit Contradiction: Mchunu’s Three Versions, One Problem

Mchunu’s testimony about an affidavit obtained from Matlala while in prison encapsulated his unreliable narration. Under oath, he first claimed his legal counsel acted independently to obtain it.

When EFF MP Julius Malema highlighted the ethical breach such conduct implied, Mchunu changed his story, saying it had been his wish to obtain the affidavit but denying involvement in its acquisition. Moments later, he claimed his lawyers acted on his instruction. Pressed further, a third version surfaced, that Matlala’s wife had approached his attorneys to offer the affidavit voluntarily.

Three mutually exclusive versions cannot coexist within honest testimony. If the first were true, his counsel acted unethically; if the second, Mchunu manipulated distance to maintain plausible deniability; if the third, it raises serious procedural questions about contact with an inmate’s family. Each revision undermined the previous one, leaving his credibility in tatters. This shifting narrative was symptomatic of a deeper habit, saying much while revealing little.

The Art of Selective Disclosure

Both witnesses displayed rhetorical dexterity that prioritised deflection over disclosure. Mchunu’s explanations shifted mid-testimony: first, the PKTT was redundant, then ineffective, then dissolved for realignment, each justification adjusted to suit the pressure of the moment.

Cele, likewise, engaged in bureaucratic obfuscation, submitting incomplete correspondence and deflecting with procedural jargon and “memory lapses.” Such selectivity betrays a deliberate containment strategy, the instinct to protect factional interest over institutional transparency.

As the hearings progressed, truth became secondary to narrative management. Each clarification birthed new inconsistencies, exposing an internal incoherence that neither minister could escape.

Internal Incoherence and the Erosion of Accountability

Beyond contradicting each other, both men contradicted themselves. Mchunu’s claims about recordings and affidavits shifted with the questioner; Cele’s depiction of his relationship with Matlala fluctuated between distant acquaintance and detailed familiarity.

These internal inconsistencies signal not miscommunication but a collapse of credibility. Taken together, their testimonies reveal a systemic decay in the architecture of governance, where contradiction is routine, oversight performative, and accountability deferred. Truth, in this framework, is not pursued but managed.

The Moral Reckoning

For the public, the hearings have been disheartening. Two senior ministers, each entrusted with the nation’s security, not only contradicted one another under oath but also presented questionable versions, neither offering proof, both eroding confidence in the state’s moral compass. The crisis before Parliament is not administrative; it is moral.

If South Africa is to reclaim the integrity of its justice system, it must move beyond the choreography of testimony to the substance of truth. The fight against corruption cannot begin with arrests alone; it begins with the honesty of those who govern.

The hearings thus reveal more than ministerial missteps; they expose a state apparatus ensnared in its own evasions. In the end, the testimonies of Mchunu and Cele are not isolated failures of integrity, but reflections of a broader collapse in South Africa’s moral infrastructure.

When those entrusted to uphold the law manipulate it, democratic faith decays. What Parliament witnessed was not a contest of versions but a revelation: the state has forgotten how to tell the truth.

* Clyde N.S. Ramalaine is a theologian, political analyst, lifelong social and economic justice activist, published author, poet, and freelance writer.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.