PILLOW TALK GIVES BIRTH TO CALAMITY AND LOVE IS BLIND: SUSPENDED EMPD CHIEF MKHWANAZI EXPOSED IN R14 MILLION STONE HEIST PLOT

LOVE DID NOT JUST MAKE HER BLIND. IT MADE HER AN ACCOMPLICE.

Suspended Ekurhuleni Metro Police Deputy Chief Julius Mkhwanazi. The Madlanga Commission heard on Tuesday that Mkhwanazi allegedly used information from his former girlfriend, a JMPD officer, to orchestrate the theft of precious stones worth fourteen million rand from a Killarney apartment in twenty twenty-three.  

By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief

The Azanian | Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered.  

AZANIAFROCOMEDIA – The Catalyst of Impact

The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry heard on Tuesday how pillow talk between two police officers became a blueprint for theft.

How romance became reconnaissance. How a suspended Ekurhuleni Metro Police chief allegedly turned his lover’s secrets into a rogue operation to steal precious stones worth fourteen million rand.

The woman sat behind a screen. The commission called her Witness K. She is an officer of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department.

She told the country that she was in a relationship with Julius Mkhwanazi, the suspended chief of Ekurhuleni Metro Police.

She told the country that he was broke. She told the country that she gave him the location of stones worth nearly fifteen million rand. And then she told the country what he did with that information.

He stole them.

Witness K testified that in twenty twenty-two she received information from an informer about illegal precious stones stored at a block of flats in Killarney. The stones were valued at fourteen million nine hundred thousand rand. She kept the information. Until Mkhwanazi needed money.

“Sometime in January or early February twenty twenty-three, Mr Mkhwanazi became very persistent about getting the information on the stones and continuously followed up with me until I was able to get in touch with the informer.”

That is her evidence. Not a tip-off. Not intelligence sharing. A lover pushed for a payday.

What followed was not policing. It was a plot. Mkhwanazi arranged for the stones to be stolen under the guise of a joint JMPD and EMPD operation. Except there was no joint operation.

Mkhwanazi admitted to the commission that there was no documentary evidence to support his claim of a joint initiative. Because there was no initiative. There was only a heist in uniform.

Witness K said the purpose from the beginning was to steal the precious stones. She provided the information. She arranged for two officers and a civilian to take them under the cover of a police raid. Each member received twenty-two thousand rand from the proceeds.

“After receiving the money, I went to meet Mr Mkhwanazi at a car wash. He then phoned Officer Stols to come to the car wash. We shared the money equally among the five of us. I gave them eighty-eight thousand rand for Mr Mkhwanazi, Officers Stols and Mackenzie, as well as Mr Van der Walt. I kept twenty-two thousand for myself.”

A car wash. That is where the deputy chief of a metro police department allegedly divided the spoils of a stone heist. Not a boardroom. Not a court. A car wash.

The commission has already heard that Mkhwanazi, an EMPD officer, had no legal authority to organise an operation in Johannesburg. EMPD jurisdiction ends at the Ekurhuleni border. Killarney is Joburg. He did not care.

He did not need a warrant. He had a girlfriend. He did not need a docket. He had a debt. He did not need authority. He had a badge, a uniform, and a woman who trusted him.

This is the rot inside the security cluster. This is why the country cannot sleep at night. The men sworn to protect the law are using the law as a costume for crime.

The same week the NPA admitted it cannot arrest Crime Intelligence boss Dumisani Khumalo because he is too important for the thirtieth of June protest, the Madlanga Commission hears that another metro chief ran a theft ring out of a love affair.

Mkhwanazi first told the commission the Killarney operation was legitimate. He said it was joint work between EMPD and JMPD. Then the documents did not exist. Then Witness K took the stand. Now the story has changed.

Now it is a story of a man who used a relationship to extract intelligence. A man who used his rank to sanction theft. He used other officers to do the dirty work and a car wash to split the profit. All while suspended. All while under investigation. All while the country is told to trust the men in uniform.

Witness K testified partly in camera. The public did not hear everything. But the country heard enough. Enough to know that love is blind. And that when love is blind inside law enforcement, the public pays.

Fourteen million rand in precious stones is gone. The informer is exposed. The operation is a fiction. The badge is stained. And the damage is not just financial.

Every real informer now knows their handler might be dating the target.

Every real JMPD officer now knows their EMPD counterpart might be running heists. Every citizen now knows that the line between cop and criminal can be as thin as a whispered secret between lovers.

The Madlanga Commission was established to clean up policing. Instead it is documenting how far the rot has spread. From Crime Intelligence to Metro Police. From generals to lovers. From national security to car wash paydays.

Mkhwanazi is suspended, not jailed. Witness K is testifying, not charged. Officer Stols, Officer Mackenzie, and Mr Van der Walt are named, not arrested. The stones are gone, not recovered. The commission is hearing, not sentencing.

The same state that says it cannot arrest Khumalo because he is too busy protecting the country is watching Mkhwanazi walk free after allegedly stealing fourteen million rand with his girlfriend.

Pillow talk gave birth to calamity. But the real calamity is a system that hears all of this and does nothing.