'Crime is planned from prison,' says former police minister Bheki Cele

FORMER Police Minister Bheki Cele has made a shocking revelation, claiming that most of South Africa's violent crime is being planned and organised from behind bars by inmates serving life sentences.

- SIMON MAJADIBODU

“Most of the crime is planned from prison,’ Cele said during an interview on the Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh Xperience (SMWX) podcast.

“The people that are doing life sentences, they run crime outside.”

Cele, who served as Minister of Police from 2018 to 2024, said correctional facilities have become a place where criminal syndicates are coordinating illicit activities beyond prison walls.

“Correctional facilities themselves are, in some ways, reproducing crime,” he said.

“One day I was phoned by a guy in prison who refused to tell me who he was. He warned me that a chief was going to be killed in Ulundi. He gave me names, the lodge and everything.”

Cele said he passed the information to KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

“When Mkhwanazi got there, he found exactly what the caller had described. That came from someone inside prison, he said.

Cele also said the Wellington Prison in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape is known as a planning centre for conflicts in the taxi industry.

“That's a big problem. The case of Thabo Bester was high-profile, but there are many like him. Not just escapees, people who are still inside, sending out plans,” he said.