The Untimely Disappearance of Robert Peel. The Madlanga Commission and the Collapse of Public Trust in South African Policing

By Cobus Steenkamp MBL

PhD Candidate (Crisis Leadership)

Lecturer and Researcher in Police Practice at North-West University, Potchefstroom

South Africa's Police Act of 1995 introduced a new policing philosophy built around one central idea: community policing. For the first time, the police would be understood as part of the community rather than apart from it - policing from the community, for the community. The name change from the South African Police Force (SAP) to the South African Police Service (SAPS) was meant to signal that shift.

It was, in many ways, a homecoming. The concept did not originate in South Africa. It was Sir Robert Peel who, in founding London's Metropolitan Police in 1829, established policing by consent as the defining principle of modern law enforcement - arguably the most progressive idea in policing at the time, and one still considered foundational wherever the rule of law and constitutional rights hold sway.

A Paramilitary Inheritance

South Africa's police, however, inherited a very different DNA. The British Empire exported an Irish policing model to its colonies - a paramilitary force built to protect the state, structured along military lines, and expected to move fluidly between civilian order and military duty. South African units served this dual role repeatedly: as Mounted Riflemen in the First World War, as part of the 2nd Infantry Division in North Africa during the Second World War, and later in Southern Rhodesia and along South Africa's own borders during the counter-insurgency campaigns of the apartheid era. This account draws in part on firsthand experience of that border service, in a counter-insurgency policing role along the Botswana frontier.

This paramilitary character was not incidental. It was deliberately preserved by the National Party government through the post-war decades, serving the state rather than the public it patrolled.

The Promise of 1994

The end of apartheid brought an aura of human dignity and rights, carried by Nelson Mandela's example into the constitutional settlement of 1996. The rebranding from SAP to SAPS was meant to symbolise a decisive break from paramilitary policing. Peel's principle of policing by consent was written into the new constitution, alongside echoes of the Magna Carta's 1215 constraint on the abuse of power. The 1994 election, in this reading, legitimised SAPS as custodian of rights that had been denied to the majority of South Africans under the previous order.

Thirty Years On: The Madlanga Commission

Three decades later, South Africans are following daily testimony from the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference, and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System - the Madlanga Commission, established by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July 2025 and chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga. Its origin is now well documented: on 6 July 2025, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi alleged, at a televised press briefing, that a syndicate spanning politicians, senior police, prosecutors and elements of the judiciary had infiltrated the criminal justice system - and accused then - Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu of unlawfully disbanding the Political Killings Task Team to shield politically connected figures from prosecution. Mchunu was placed on special leave days later and has denied the allegations. Hearings began on 17 September 2025; the Commission's evidence deadline has since been extended to 2 October 2026, with a final report now due on 16 November 2026.

Where is Robert Peel in this story? Buried, one might argue, under structural mismanagement, politically driven appointments, and the remnants of what was once - imperfectly, but recognisably - a high-trust institution. Peel's founding insight was that policing depends on public consent and cooperation, not on the application of force. Ernest Hemingway once described bankruptcy as happening "gradually, then suddenly" - the same could be said of institutional trust, and South Africa's police service may be closer to the "suddenly" than many would like to admit.

Peel's Principles, Measured Against 2026

The Bottom Line

None of this means the constitutional vision behind SAPS was wrong. It means the distance between that vision and its execution has widened to a point where the Madlanga Commission's findings - due by 16 November 2026 - will matter well beyond the individuals named in it. Public trust, in Peel's own terms, is the currency policing runs on. By the numbers above, that account is deeply overdrawn.