Hawks: The Directorate for Political Witch-hunts

23 September 2016

According to reports, embattled Head of the Hawks, Berning Ntlemeza, has assigned one lone investigator to the multibillion rand corruption scandal at the PRASA, while committing far greater resources to the politically motivated witch-hunt against Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan. 

This reflects a clear lack of political will on the part of the ANC to tackle large scale corruption with the Hawks instead being used as a political hit-squad by President Zuma and his cronies to settle their personal scores. 

The DA will write to the Chairperson of the Police Portfolio Committee, Francois Beukman, to request that Ntlemeza be summoned to answer why the necessary resources needed for the investigation into PRASA have not been allocated, and why he sees fit to allocate far greater manpower and money to hound Minister Gordhan.

My colleague, Shadow Minister of Transport, Manny de Freitas MP, will further request that the investigator assigned to the PRASA case be called before the Transport Committee to report on the progress being made in the investigation.

The business of the Hawks should be to investigate serious priority crime, such as large scale corruption – not an instrument for political witch-hunts to be pointed at all those who stand up to Zuma and his parasitic patronage network. 

Issued by Zakhele Mbhele, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 23 September 2016