In the face of rampant crime in the country, the SAPS Crime Intelligence division has been found wanting with 15 surveillance drones that have been lying idle at their head office for a staggering five years.
The unit, which is led by Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo, spent more than half a million rand to buy the drones in 2020, but to date, no one has ever bothered to dispatch the equipment to provinces to be used to fight crime.
The chilling tidbits of this wasteful expenditure scandal are contained in a report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence IGI), which has been sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa, suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu, and his stand-in, Firoz Cachalia, as well as parliament’s standing committee of intelligence.
“The divisional management of SAPS-CI should consider conducting an internal investigation into the procurement of 15 surveillance drones and establish the circumstances that led to the non-utilisation of the drones…,” reads the report compiled exactly a year ago.
“And the divisional management of SAPS-CI should consider utilising rollover funds from the secret services account (slush fund), which was R138-million at the beginning of the 2023-24 financial year, to resuscitate the technological enhancement project to capacitate the division with technological tools of trade to aid in intelligence gathering, crime prevention, crime detection, and criminal prosecution.”
The report traces the genesis of the unused drones to the same technological enhancement project embarked upon during the 2019-20 financial year.
The project contained a plan to procure 13 Precise Mobile Location (PML) devices, also known as “grabbers”, as well as the 15 surveillance drones.
According to the IGI, the grabbers were used in life and limb situations, especially in cases relating to kidnapping for ransom, where Crime Intelligence has made great strides in the use of the equipment.
“While we commend this excellent work, we have noted that the surveillance drones acquired for an amount of R533 250 during February 2020 have not been distributed to provinces to aid intelligence gathering,” the IGI found.
“As a result thereof, provinces such as the Western Cape tend to rely on technological equipment such as drones supplied by the City of Cape Town during intelligence operations.”
The IGI dismissed the Crime Intelligence submission that 10 of the 15 drones had since been dispatched to provinces during the investigation, saying: “We have not been able to verify this information, as no evidence was provided to support this assertion.”
The IGI found that Eastern Cape and Western Cape were the hardest hit by Crime Intelligence’s poor operational technological capability, with serious deficiencies identified during an oversight visit to the two provinces.
Consequently, there was little to no effective intelligence gathering to support crime prevention, crime detection, and prosecution in these provinces.
“It would appear that the SAPS-CI has not kept abreast with the latest technological developments, as various technological instruments are old and outdated.
“This outdated equipment includes covert cameras, radio handsets, and tracker devices procured 15 years ago,” the report reveals.
The poor technological capacity extends to the Crime Intelligence head office, where some of the operatives have had to use their own funds to purchase their own personal tracker equipment to use.
“SAPS-CI technological capability for effective intelligence gathering in support of crime prevention, crime detection, and criminal prosecution is severely lacking.
“Moreover, outdated infrastructure with respect to information technology equipment requires upgrades.”
The poor technology woes are worsened by nonexistent social media monitoring, which was badly exposed during the July 2021 unrest over the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma.
In this regard, the IGI instructed Khumalo to prioritise the procurement of
social media monitoring tools to bolster SAPS-CI’s shambolic intelligence collection
capabilities.
SAPS national spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe had not responded to the questions Sunday World sent her by the time of publication.
