IFP: Task team to investigate allegations that politicians are funding gangs in KZN must be appointed

10 June 2021

The IFP calls on the KZN Premier, Sihle Zikalala, to urgently appoint a task team to investigate serious allegations that some politicians are alleged to be funding gangs to commit crimes in Pietermaritzburg and surrounding areas.

The IFP’s calls comes after the KwaZulu-Natal police revealed that there are some high-profile people, politicians and business owners in Pietermaritzburg surroundings who are funding gangs to commit crimes.

We are concerned about these allegations of unholy alliance between politicians and criminals. The support received by mafias from elected, criminally accused politicians leads to more criminal activities. The link between police and gangs must also be investigated. The IFP wants to know who are these politicians and business owners who are sheep by day and wolf by night by being in cahoots with criminals. Such politicians must be exposed and be subjected to the full might of the law. It is shocking and embarrassing that we have leaders who should be working hard in protecting the communities that elected them into power yet they are alleged to be the enablers of criminal elements that are terrorising the very same people.

Now we know the reasons behind the latest crime statistics delivered by National Minister of Police, Bheki Cele last month, tracking criminal patterns in the country between January to March 2021 which painted a bleak picture about KwaZulu-Natal as it recorded a double digit increase in overall crimes of 16.9%.

This is a clear proof that we live in a mafia state, where the politicians, law enforcement agencies and criminals work hand-in-hand planning how to kill and rob people of their hard earned money. Citizens’ confidence in the capacity of our law enforcement agencies and public leaders to root out crime and corruption has been eroded, and that’s not surprising. It is therefore important that this criminal network must be rooted out from all spheres of society, including from inside the law enforcement agencies themselves. Such political leaders do not deserve to be public representatives, they belong in jail. They are a disgrace.

As the IFP in the province, we are on record stating consistently that policing and police management in the KwaZulu-Natal must focus their attention on disrupting the architecture of the illicit economy underworld perpetuated by drug lords. Thus, the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal believes that the tentacles of the drug-lord criminal network reach wider to a point of capturing certain elements from the political leaders.

We wish to reiterate that the criminal networks must be dismantled irrespective whoever is involved.

Issued by Blessed Gwala, IFP KZN Provincial Spokesperson for Community Safety and Liaison, 10 June 2021