Illustratrive image: Satirist Anton Taylor. (Photo: X / @Am_Bluay) | Police Minister on special leave Senzo Mchunu. (Photo: Gallo Images / OJ Koloti ) | Male members from the City of Tshwane, SAPS. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Alet Pretorius) 
South Africa is facing serious crime and policing problems, yet these arenas are constantly the centre of controversies – often due to the actions of law enforcing leaders.
One of the latest sagas involves cops meant to be looking into priority crimes, like terror acts, investigating and raiding the home of a TikTok comedian.
This happened because the police minister at the time apparently mistook the satirist, who in a video skit pretended to have bribed him, for a journalist.
All this unfolded in the runup to the minister being placed on special leave in a separate and very real corruption accusation scandal – one of the biggest ever to rock South Africa’s policing arena – that is producing several sub-scandals.
Read more: Cape killings surge as baby and child shot dead amid staggering ‘270 murders’ in July
These police issues are exposing divisions among the country’s top officers and are developing as violent crimes persist.
Daily Maverick last week reported that nearly 270 murders were recorded at about a fifth of the Western Cape’s police stations in just one month this year – July.
The murders represent only a portion of killings that happened in a single province over a month and therefore also signify a fragment of violence happening nationally.
Police, meanwhile, are stretched thin.
Understaffed Hawks
Take, for example, the crime-fighting unit the Hawks.
Fully known as the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations, its officers are meant to do what its name suggests – look into high-level criminality.
The South African Police Service website indeed states that the Hawks are mandated to investigate “national priority offences”.
As of a few months ago, the unit was functioning with about half the personnel it is meant to have.
During a meeting in June this year, Parliament heard details of how the Hawks unit “was currently operating at just 50.41% of its approved staffing structure”.
Minutes of that meeting say: “Of 5,300 positions it was sitting at 2,000-odd positions with a shortfall of 49.6%.
“The current operational capacity was impacting the workload, which necessitated prioritisation of certain matters over others.”
This implies the Hawks must carefully choose which matters to prioritise from stacks of weighty cases.
Satire versus targeting the state
Last week, on Friday, 29 August 2025, News24’s Karyn Maughan was the first to report that in June this year (coincidentally when Parliament heard details about the Hawks being understaffed), the Hawks raided the Cape Town home of a comedian and social media influencer, Anton Taylor.
His cellphone was also seized for a fortnight as part of the Hawks investigation into him.
This happened because of a satirical skit he posted to social media on 29 March in which he talks about policing matters and “bribing” official police minister at the time, Senzo Mchunu.
If one is familiar with social media, the skit comes across as just that: a skit.
In a TikTok video posted on Friday about the Hawks investigation he was the focus of, Taylor explained that the skit involved him playing a recurring character, a Czech criminal, that saw him putting on an intentionally “poor” and “outlandish” accent.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 GUILT AS CHARGED https://t.co/Ljh0FL5QKF
— Anton Taylor (@Anton_Taylor) August 29, 2025
Mchunu, though, had lodged a criminal complaint over it – he told News24 that he found the skit “extremely cruel” and “insulting”, and that this did not equate to an abuse of power on his part.
News24’s report on Friday said that it was ultimately decided that Taylor would not be prosecuted for alleged Cybercrimes Act violations.
This is why news on the matter only surfaced that day, because Taylor was comfortable going public about it.
According to News24’s report, as well as Taylor’s TikTok video posted on Friday, he was the focus of an investigation that was flagged as a Crimes Against the State matter.
The Hawks section of the official police website says these kinds of matters include high treason, sedition and contravention of acts including the explosives one.
‘My guy’ Mchunu
Taylor’s skit was in response to news that surfaced earlier this year that Mchunu had approached the Independent Police Investigative Directorate with a complaint against KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
Mchunu previously stated, though, that he was not actually the complainant.
This little saga hinted that something was amiss between Mkhwanazi and Mchunu – this is now clearly the case – and Taylor’s video skit seems to have inadvertently struck a nerve here.
In the skit, Taylor says he’s “the foreign criminal in South Africa” making money off drugs, hijackings and cash-in-transit crimes.
@anton.taylor The Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has welcomed the IPID investigation into General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi 🥰 This is a brilliant smear campaign orchestrated by corrupt politicians who were getting worried that Lord Mkhwanazi would come for them. Criminals across South Africa are celebrating! Halala! 🥳 #handsoffMkhwanazi #Mkhwanazi #GeneralMkhwanazi #NhlanhlaMkhwanazi ♬ original sound - Anton Taylor
He refers to Mkhwanazi and to Mchunu, who he calls “my guy”.
The skit continues with Taylor saying Mchunu had stated that he is “coming for Mkhwanazi”.
Taylor also says: “I had to pay Mchunu a lot of money, and I am giving him a BMW and I’m paying for the three prostitutes.”
Mchunu, in his response to the saga detailed in News24’s article on Friday, said that he had thought Taylor was a journalist and that he could not ignore the allegations made against him.
News24’s article quoted Mchunu as saying: “Once a person says you are involved in prostitutes, it resonates because you are a male, and then these things happen.”
This led to him lodging the complaint with police.
What all this boils down to is that an understaffed priority crimes police unit, the Hawks, investigated and raided the home of a satirist for a social media skit because the police minister at the time seems to have thought the satirist was a journalist.
Cops monitor social media
Taylor, in his TikTok video posted on Friday, said the Hawks had raided his home “with an affidavit for Crimes Against the State. ie, terrorism”.
He said it was because Mchunu “didn’t like a satirical video that I posted to my social media”.
Taylor added: “So, to be clear, Senzo Mchunu set the Hawks on me…
“This is the kind of intimidation that occurs in authoritarian states.”
While it is strange for the Hawks’ investigation into Taylor to have been flagged as a Crimes Against the State matter, there are some clues in this arena pointing to how police officers feel about certain online posts.
@anton.taylorI urge everybody to read the News24 article today written by Karyn Maughan, and to act on this. This is a serious infringement on our rights and a very scary precedent. I have been unable to speak on this for the past two months as I was waiting for the case to be dismissed, but now I can share my story. As far as I know, this the first time in Democratic South Africa that a comedian has been tried for Crimes Against the State.♬ original sound - Anton Taylor
In March this year, there was a police committee meeting in Parliament during which social media was referenced.
During that meeting, it was alleged that individuals wanting to create an impression of instability in the Crime Intelligence unit were doing so by pushing fake news on social media.
The monitoring of these online platforms was therefore being intensified.
Read more: Crime Intelligence target of social media fake news, but Parliament hears unit also like ‘a mafia’
Mchunu, during that March meeting in Parliament, had also said that there were people in the country who specialised in making allegations against certain individuals or institutions.
So, this made it clear that police were keeping an eye on social media – and perhaps certain individuals – for issues including anything untoward against its members.
‘You are next’
Taylor’s skit was posted a few weeks after that Parliament meeting.
Some of the comments he made in it coincidentally tied into unprecedented police skirmishes that later developed.
In the skit, Taylor spoke about getting “them” to investigate Mkhwanazi and said it “is because I’m telling them: ‘You are next.’”
Taylor said that Mkhwanazi was “coming for the politicians” and “it’s like so obvious that Mkhwanazi comes for the criminals and the politicians, and now they’re investigating him”.
He added that criminals were praying “that the public does not protect Mkhwanazi”.
A few months after Taylor’s skit was posted, and the month after his home was raided, Mkhwanazi sparked a massive policing scandal when he held a press conference in July.
It exposed deep mistrust among South Africa’s highest-ranking police officers.
During his press conference, Mkhwanazi had made several astounding accusations, including that Mchunu and other figures had undermined investigations into political killings, and that Mchunu was in cahoots with a crime suspect.
Mchunu denied the allegations, but was placed on special leave.
Taylor’s words in his skit about Mkhwanazi “coming for the politicians”, paired with Mkhwanazi’s subsequent press conference allegations, were therefore, in a sense, spot-on.
Read more: ‘SA will see fire if anything happens to Mkhwanazi’ — Parliament hears warning sentiment from MP
Following Mkhwanazi’s July press conference, a “Hands off Mkhwanazi” campaign started up in various provinces and, that same month in Parliament, various MPs expressed their views on him.
The EFF’s Eugene Mthethwa had even said: “Should … anything happen to Mkhwanazi, I want to second the very notion and the sentiment that this country will see fire.”
In a way, this also loops back to Taylor’s skit, specifically his comment about criminals hoping “that the public does not protect Mkhwanazi”.
Taylor’s TikTok skit, therefore, came across as retrospectively prophetic, and like the National Prosecuting Authority reportedly found, not prosecution-worthy and criminal.
Failure to launch
The satirical saga is now just one of several sub-scandals linked to the whole Mchunu-Mkhwanazi matter.
Following Mkhwanazi’s press conference in July, President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered a Commission of Inquiry be created to investigate his accusations.
The commission was meant to start its hearings in Gauteng on Monday, 1 September.
But last week it emerged that it would not be able to proceed because of infrastructure issues.
Read more: Minister Kubayi suspends top justice department officials over Madlanga Commission delays
In other words, South Africa’s most important president-ordered policing commission into a seismic scandal could not start, in effect because of poor planning.
Daily Maverick reported that due to the delay, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi suspended the department’s director-general Doc Mashabane and its deputy director general responsible for Information and Communication Technology Jabu Hlatshwayo.
This was pending an investigation and disciplinary process.
It was not immediately clear when the commission would start.
What is clear though is that the proceedings will probably produce and expose even more policing controversies and scandals. DM