Elias Mawela tapped his epaulettes and service ribbons. “I never thought I’d be wearing this thing,” he said, pointing to the three stars of a lieutenant-general.

The demure 53-year-old, who joined the police in 1984, won’t list his proudest achievements. “I’m this person who doesn’t blow my own horn,” he said, sitting in a boardroom at Gauteng SAPS headquarters.

He opens up about his next goal: reaching 40 years in the service. Forty years means he didn’t succumb to corruption or ill-discipline, or breach protocol. It means he can retire with a clean slate.

“That’s all I care about.”

Mawela has been Gauteng’s top cop for two weeks. When Police Minister Bheki Cele announced his appointment as provincial commissioner recently in Mamelodi East, where Mawela served as an officer, he said tackling Gauteng’s crime is crucial to improving safety across the country.

Gauteng may contribute as much as 50% of reported crimes across the country and its organised criminals often strike in other provinces, said Mawela. In 2018, the province experienced increases in its rates of murder, cash-in-transit robberies, bank robberies, sexual assault, rape and truck hijackings.

“Over the next three years, Gauteng must become a much safer province, especially for women and children,” said Premier David Makhura in his State of the Province Address on Monday.

He believes Mawela is the right officer for the job saying: “He has a distinguished career as a skilful and dedicated crime buster.”

Mawela has been tasked with and reorganising the Gauteng SAPS, including re-establishing specialised units on gender-based violence, house and business robberies, carjackings, farm murders, gangsterism and cash-in-transit heists.

He spent his first week on the job travelling the province to address frontline officers, explaining his vision and imploring them to become more service-orientated.

“People, they can only walk with you if they know where you’re going,” he said.

The lieutenant-general has served in senior national positions since 2004. He was the joint chairperson of the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NATJOINTS), which is the operations arm of government’s Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster. In 2011 he re-established and led SAPS’s Operational Response Services Division, responsible for public order policing across the country.

Mawela was tipped to act in the national commissioner post after Riah Phiyega was suspended in 2015. He heard the news through the media, he said, and didn’t fancy becoming the country’s top cop.

“I feel pity for my national commissioner because, you know, I asked myself a question: does this person have time to rest? Does he have time for his family?”

Mawela was serving at the SAPS national office as Phiyega’s career came to a halt due to her leadership during the 2012 Marikana massacre and subsequent commission of inquiry. Mawela denied that he shared any responsibility for the killings.

He flew into Marikana on a helicopter shortly after police had stopped shooting the striking mineworkers. He struggled to explain seeing the bodies lying on the ground. “I, I can’t explain how did I feel… It’s not a good scene when you see people like that.”

Mawela spoke at the national management forum meeting the night before the shootings where the decision to disperse and disarm the strikers was taken. SAPS did not disclose the meeting at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, which criticised police leaders for failing to disclose or recall details about the foreboding event.

The provincial commissioner said he had offered extra resources for the Marikana operation. He said managers at the meeting were not responsible for the implementation of what was known as the “tactical phase”.

“No one will ever be proud of what happened in Marikana and it’s my wish and my prayer that it must never ever happen again.”

Mawela is new to media attention and during the interview often turned back to the talking points in his notebook. His priorities are to build a culture of putting people first, improve crime prevention, tackle organised and serious contact crimes, and improve community collaboration.

“We must prevent crime from happening,” he said. “We need to be omnipresent in those hotspots so that we must make it difficult for the criminals to commit a crime, so that it will be our focus area in terms of reducing the levels of crime.”

Crime intelligence is essential and Mawela said the unit is overcoming its shortcomings.

“It’s up and running. And there are many, many excellent intelligence operators.”

He said SAPS officers must be responsive and build close relationships and trust in communities. Using the example of student protests, he said building trust becomes more difficult when police are called in to resolve political or social issues.

“Now the police are hated by the students, for what? I think it is unfair for the police. It destroyed the relationship there had been with the community and we don’t want that… It’s a waste of resources.”

Mawela has tried to encourage his officers to act on crimes like drugs, sex work and human trafficking by warning them they too could be affected.

“They mustn’t think they themselves are immune to this thing. If they fail to stop it, it will come into their backyards.”

He agreed there are dodgy cops within his ranks, but optimistically put the onus on the public to report corruption. Their complaints will eventually get heard – if not straight away, when another complaint is laid, or when someone appears in front of a magistrate.

“Corruption is a problem. It’s no longer a perception,” he said. “As a collective, we can kill this thing of corruption. We can kill it completely.”

Mawela appeared in Parliament in 2018 and explained that the public order policing unit was struggling because it had less than half of the ideal amount of officers. Would resources be a challenge in Gauteng?

“The resources will never be enough,” he said.

Mawela wouldn’t provide exact figures but said Gauteng has enough cops to make an impact on crime and SAPS had the benefit of working with metropolitan police departments and Gauteng Traffic Police.

“He’s going to have a very complex set of challenges,” said Gareth Newham, head of justice and violence prevention at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS).

“I think for me one of the biggest priorities is street robberies if he wants to create a genuine sense of safety in the province,” said Newham. Street robberies are an entry point into house and business robberies.

Newham listed organised crime and building public trust as other points to tackle. He called on Mawela to send a clear message on corruption and reverse the decline in officers who go through disciplinary hearings.

Politics come with the post.

“He’s just got to resist all that nonsense,” said Newham. “He has the experience to know not to be part of it.”

DA Gauteng leader John Moodey said the province’s residents aren’t safe and Mawela must professionalise SAPS.

“This can only be done through equipping our police stations with adequate resources and equipment, providing training to the police and adequate staffing.”

The IFP’s provincial chair Bonginkosi Dlamini said the crime was “a thorn in the flesh” of Gauteng communities and urged the new commissioner to work diligently to restore public confidence in the police.

SAPS has been quick to note the successes under its new provincial leader. Days after his appointment, seven suspects were arrested for a cash-in-transit heist. As part of the Buya Mthetho operation, 530 suspects on the SAPS wanted list were arrested in overnight raids on Thursday and Friday.

“Destroying is easy, but how do you build something that will last?” asked Mawela, noting his work in re-establishing the Operational Response Services Division.

He has much building ahead. His predecessor, Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange, who also spent 35 years in the service before retiring in 2018, was arrested in November along with other top cops for allegedly defrauding SAPS out of R80-million.

Mawela denied that the case put a cloud over his office and asked the public not to associate De Lange’s charges with what he’s trying to achieve. DM