Illustrative Image: SAPS chief financial officer Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane (Photo: X / @ewnewporter) | Sidelined Police Minister Senzo Mchunu. (Photo: Gallo Images / ER Lombard) 
Police officers involved in irregular spending can face written warnings and corrective counselling.
But this, according to the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) chief financial officer, Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane, does not seem to deter wrongdoing.
“So… according to me, [it is] not real consequence management,” she said, while testifying before Parliament’s ad hoc committee on Tuesday, 25 November 2025.
“This is a problem. This is a culture in SAPS where irregular expenditure, you’ll find, there’s no seriousness [with] the accountability on it.”
Dimpane was the committee’s first witness while it sits at Kgosi Mampuru prison in Tshwane, where its proceedings, usually held in Cape Town, continued on Tuesday.
The ad hoc committee is investigating accusations that a drug trafficking cartel has infiltrated South Africa’s law enforcement and politics.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ED_585836-1.jpg "Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala. (Photo: Fani Mahuntsi / Gallo Images)")
It moved its hearings to the prison this week because organised crime accused Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, who is facing attempted murder and money laundering charges, is detained there.
Matlala, a central figure in the law enforcement scandal, is expected to testify before the committee on Wednesday.
However, it emerged externally of the official ad hoc hearing on Tuesday that his lawyers wanted to postpone that.
BREAKING: Cat Matlala now claims he cannot appear before the #AdHocCommittee tomorrow because he is “not prepared”...an excuse ActionSA does not accept!
— Dereleen James MP (@DereleenJ) November 25, 2025
This is a textbook Stalingrad tactic to frustrate our work. Whether Matlala likes it or not, he has had ample time to prepare!
This issue was not discussed during Tuesday’s hearing.
During previous ad hoc committee proceedings, it was alleged that Matlala had been approached to finance a project involving sidelined Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s ambition to become ANC president or deputy president.
Mchunu denied any wrongdoing in the scandal – and he denied knowing Matlala.
‘Too much damage’
Last week, during the ad hoc committee’s proceedings, focus was on a R360-million police contract that was awarded last year to Matlala’s company, Medicare 24 Tshwane District (Pty) Ltd.
The contract was subsequently cancelled, and MPs heard that an audit report had found: “The role of the facilitator in the bid evaluation committee previously exposed and is continuously exposing SAPS bidding process... [to] corruption risks.”
Dimpane said on Tuesday that the Medicare 24 contract had “caused a lot of harm” and she felt that “the damage is too much”.
Read more: Inside Cat Matlala’s R360m police tender that ‘shouldn’t have been awarded’
A forensic investigation into the Matlala contract, which Dimpane pushed for, is set to be concluded over the next few weeks.
Dimpane expanded on irregular expenditure in the SAPS while testifying on Tuesday, saying that she and some colleagues were “of the view [that] when it comes to irregular expenditure, there seems to be a lack of accountability, and the consequence management is not real.”
Billions of rands
She said there was “irregular expenditure taking place all over” and managers appointed those who conducted disciplinary investigations.
“The outcome is that a person must receive a written warning. The person must receive correcting counselling.”
Dimpane did not view that as “real consequence management” because it did not deter wrongdoing.
She said individuals were breaking procurement rules, and the question was whether this was deliberate – in other words, whether fraud was being intentionally committed.
During a question-and-answer session with MPs, Dimpane said action was taken “when we pick up there’s deliberate override of controls”.
Earlier this month, Daily Maverick reported on findings on the police service by the Auditor-General of South Africa.
These included:
- The police disclosed R56-million as irregular expenditure under assessment.
- In the 2024/25 financial year, irregular expenditure amounted to R649.722-million.
- Irregular expenditure not submitted to a relevant authority for “further action” amounted to just under R2.5-billion. It was not clear which period this figure related to.
Dimpane on Tuesday referred to this figure.
She testified that it involved about 275 transactions that were under assessment, effectively to see how to reduce the nearly R2.5-billion that needed further action.
R435m spent on PKTT
During Tuesday’s ad hoc committee proceedings, the police’s Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) in KwaZulu-Natal fell under scrutiny.
This loops back to Mchunu.
On 31 December 2024, months before sidelined Police Minister Mchunu was put on special leave, he issued an order to disband the PKTT.
KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has alleged that Mchunu had been influenced to order the disbandment because certain crime suspects believed this would impede investigations against them.
Mchunu denied this, saying factors that contributed to his disbandment order included the tight police budget.
Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane outlines the funding structure and resourcing of task teams within the @SAPoliceService as she continues her evidence before the Ad Hoc Committee.#7thParliament#AdHocCommittee#Mkhwanazi pic.twitter.com/si2XtIyUYe
— Justice-and-security-Cluster (@JustSecuCluster) November 25, 2025
Dimpane testified on Tuesday that she had been on leave from 17 December last year to 10 January.
While on leave, she had heard about the PKTT disbandment directive in media reports.
“I think I saw something on one of the news outlets,” Dimpane recalled.
She contacted her colleague, who was acting in her position at the time, and asked if her office had been included in discussions about the PKTT.
The response was “no”.
Dimpane also testified that Mchunu had never discussed the PKTT and its budget with her.
This meant she did not know how he decided to order its disbandment, especially in relation to his assertion that he did so because he was concerned about the tight police budget.
Earlier, Dimpane referred to a table that showed that since its inception in 2018, a total of R435-million had been spent on the PKTT.
The same table showed that a separate R368-million, split over 2022-2024, appeared to have been spent on a national shutdown that the EFF had called for in 2023.
Several MPs pointed out that the amount did not seem congruent if it referred to a day or a few days of policing, yet it was not far off the amount spent on the PKTT over several years since 2018.
Cash for informants
During Tuesday’s proceedings, cash payments to informants were also touched on. ActionSA’s Dereleen James said that there had long been claims of abuse in this arena.
Dimpane said there were policies in place in the Crime Intelligence unit (which for years has been the centre of controversy involving accusations that the secret account has been looted) that dealt with informants’ pay.
Members of the Ad Hoc Committee established to investigate allegations made by @SAPoliceService KZN head, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, engage the SAPS Chief Financial Officer, Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane.#7thParliament#AdHocCommittee#Mkhwanazi pic.twitter.com/VmBCFgyG8h
— Justice-and-security-Cluster (@JustSecuCluster) November 25, 2025
James put it to Dimpane that Crime Intelligence was “stealing this money” and that, as chief financial officer, she was “the handler of the purse” and expected to do something to counter that.
Dimpane repeated that Crime Intelligence had policies in place.
She said it had two sets of budgets, one an open budget, over which she had not received complaints.
The ad hoc proceedings are expected to resume on Wednesday, when it will be seen whether Matlala will testify. DM