Michelle Sutton
45K posts
This story is from a 2023 Hamburg trial: German Judge Anne Meier-Göring let eight migrant men go free after they gang r*ped a 15-year-old girl for three hours, ruling “migration frustration” a factor. Freed men are Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian, Moroccan, Turkish, and Bulgarian.
About R3 million in payments to police members is now under criminal investigation after those payments were allegedly motivated as being linked to protection duties for President Cyril Ramaphosa. But here is the issue. The members who were paid may not even have been involved in that protection work. According to the information before me, the payments were picked up on the police finance system after concerns were raised about cash advances processed through a SAPS unit in Pretoria. The allegation is that the proper approved advance request forms, the SAPS 156 forms, were not uploaded on the POLFIN system. Instead, a memorandum linked to protection duties for the President appears to have been used. But the members who allegedly received the money were reportedly not listed on that memorandum. That is where this becomes very serious. Because if state duties linked to presidential protection were used to justify payments to members who were not actually part of that function, then this is not just sloppy administration. It points to possible fraud and a very serious abuse of internal systems. This is also not happening in some ordinary part of the police service. This appears to involve a highly sensitive environment where discipline, accuracy and tight financial controls should be non-negotiable. So South Africans have every right to ask: Who approved these payments? Who captured them on the system? Who signed off on the motivation? Who checked whether the members being paid were actually assigned to those duties? Why were the proper forms allegedly missing? And how many other payments like this may still be sitting unnoticed in the system? The matter has reportedly been referred to the Anti-Corruption Investigating Unit, and both internal and criminal investigations are under way. Good. But South Africans have seen this before. Money moves. Red flags appear. An investigation starts. Then silence. Then nobody important is held responsible. That cannot happen here. If these allegations are true, then public money was paid out on the back of a false or misleading justification, and the name of presidential protection was used to push it through. That would be a disgrace. This investigation must follow the paper trail properly. It must identify every official involved, every beneficiary, every approval, and every failure in the chain. If criminal conduct is found, then arrests must follow. The public cannot be expected to trust SAPS while serious allegations of internal fraud keep coming from within its own ranks. Accountability cannot end with the weakest person in the room. We will monitor and follow up. IC dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-0…
As Passover begins, we send warm wishes to all who celebrate. We recognize the endurance of the Jewish people in the face of antisemitism and share their hope for a future of peace. Chag Sameach!
