MADLANGA COMMISSION: SAPS needs once-off ‘deep clean’ targeting corrupt officers — World Bank expert

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> After months of testimony about alleged political interference, criminal networks and compromised officials, the Madlanga Commission has heard a new proposal on how to clean up the SAPS when ordinary disciplinary and criminal procedures aren’t working.

On Wednesday, 16 September, Laura Pop, a senior financial sector specialist at the World Bank, told the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry that SAPS might need to undergo a once-off “deep cleaning” exercise, which she described as an extraordinary evaluation, to address integrity failures in the compromised institution, restore its integrity and rebuild public trust.

Her testimony came a day after a damning portrait of alleged police corruption emerged at the Madlanga Commission when Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) Internal Affairs chief Superintendent Elmarie de Beer took the stand.

De Beer outlined a pattern of alleged collusion between some officers and criminal syndicates, identifying the Tactical Response Unit, Special Projects Unit and, to a lesser extent, the K9 Unit as the divisions most frequently implicated in cases investigated by Internal Affairs.

But the warning signs of criminal infiltration predate the commission itself. They came into sharp public focus on 6 July 2025, when KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi made explosive allegations about criminal syndicates operating within law enforcement.

More than a year later, the evidence before the Madlanga Commission has brought those allegations into a broader institutional focus, with testimony pointing to alleged systemic corruption, political interference and links between senior law-enforcement figures and organised crime.

Pop testified how criminal syndicates could exploit weaknesses in state institutions, and how illicit money could move through systems designed to prevent it. She told the Commission that South Africa’s problem was not unique.