Police credibility in crisis as inquiry and commission expose deep rot

SOUTH Africans are watching yet another wave of corruption revelations - from Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's explosive claims about criminal infiltration in the police, to testimony before Parliament's ad hoc committee and the Madlanga Commission with weary eyes.

- JONISAYI MAROMO

Across townships, suburbs and rural communities, the reaction is the same: not shock, but exhaustion and fatigue. For many, these scandals have become a grim ritual in a democracy that promised integrity but has delivered repetition.

"We are fatigued by repetition"

Siyabulela Jentile, president of #NotInMyName

What the country is witnessing, according to Jentile, "isn't new - it's the continuation of a long, painful story of institutional betrayal".

"South Africans are not numb by choice; we are fatigued by repetition. Each revelation of corruption lands on ground already scorched by previous scandals — from state capture to failures in local governance. When accountability becomes the exception rather than the norm, outrage slowly turns into resignation."

Public trust in the South African Police Service (SAPS), he said, has been profoundly eroded.

"People no longer see the police as protectors but as an extension of a state that has lost moral authority. In townships and rural areas, residents feel safer calling community patrols or neighbourhood-watch groups than reporting crimes to SAPS.

"A compromised police service doesn't just fail to solve crimes; it incubates criminality. It gives organised syndicates, drug networks, and corrupt officers room to operate with impunity. It means gender-based violence cases go uninvestigated, children disappear without trace, and communities resort to vigilantism."

For Jentile, corruption has "festered into our national fabric".

"We joke about it, anticipate it, even budget for it. That's the danger: when wrongdoing becomes predictable, accountability becomes optional. But the fact that people are no longer shocked is not a sign of acceptance - it's a symptom of exhaustion. Civil society must help rebuild that moral outrage and turn it into organised demand for reform."

Melusi Ncala, Senior Researcher at Corruption Watch