How #FeesMustFall students were used to ‘defraud’ crime intelligence

Senior police officers who were arrested this week for allegedly defrauding the crime intelligence division of R54.2-million painted themselves as victims of students that were protesting for more affordable tertiary education. 

Investigative documents seen by the Mail & Guardian lifted the lid on how Khomotso Phahlane, Lieutenant Colonel Godfrey Mahwayi, Major General Maanda Obert Nemutandzhela and Major General Mankosana Agnes Makhele said the #FeesMustFall protests of 2015 and 2016 had “over stretched” resources and that police did not have a “solution to monitor the social media activities” of the students. 

The documents include one dated 20 December 2016, that Mahwayi wrote in motivation for the procurement of spyware. Mahwayi is the crime intelligence division’s commander for IT support. 

“The social media monitoring solution to be procured will be utilised by the analysis capacity of crime intelligence for the profiling [of] suspects. In most cases, these events are organised through social media sites due to the geographical locations of participants [the students],” Mahwayi wrote. 

“Due to the fact that this matter is of extreme emergency, only two service providers for the supply of this service were identified and, due to time constraints, it is not feasible to source a third quote as there is … very limited service [providers] in this space,” Mahwayi added, motivating for a deviation from the national treasury’s procurement regulations.

In the 2007-2008 financial year, the treasury released regulations that said emergency procurement above R500 000 could only be conducted outside the competitive and publicly advertised bidding process when limited suppliers were available for a product.