Illustrative image: A former South African Police Service general was arrested in an ammunition case and is expected in court on 20 October 2026. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)
Former police general Mulangi Mphego appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, in a case involving more than 100 rounds of South African Police Service (SAPS) ammunition found at his home in Centurion earlier this year.
According to a SAPS statement, Mphego (57) was arrested after a raid at his Centurion home on 6 July this year, which the police’s cold case unit had conducted.
More than 100 rounds of police-issued R5 and 9mm ammunition had allegedly been seized.
This is what the former general has now been arrested for: unlawful possession of the ammunition.
Mfazi murder investigation
According to the SAPS statement, during the July raid police “seized documents and electronic devices believed to be relevant to the investigation into the murder of Lieutenant General Sindile Mfazi”.
Mfazi was the deputy national police commissioner of crime detection, who died in 2021.
Daily Maverick previously reported that the government attributed his death to Covid-19 complications.
But it was later alleged that Mfazi had uncovered extreme corruption and was the target of professional murderers who poisoned him.
Mfazi’s body was exhumed and police later confirmed that they were investigating what had caused his death.
Mphego, Selebi and Mabuza
Mphego left the police service in 2009.
His name recently surfaced among the broader accusations and claims pummelling the police service.
Mphego was once the acting head of the police’s beleaguered Crime Intelligence unit.
He had seemed supportive of certain individuals, including former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi.
/file/attachments/orphans/exgeneral-arrest-caryn1_694308.jpg "The late Lieutenant-General Sindile Mfazi, former deputy national commissioner of crime detection. (Photo: SAPS)")
Selebi was appointed cop boss in February 2000 – in 2010 he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for taking bribes from drug dealer Glenn Agliotti.
Mphego once faced a charge of defeating the ends of justice for allegedly intervening and trying to get an affidavit from Agliotti in support of Selebi.
This charge was reportedly struck off the roll.
Other issues connect to Mphego.
In August 2018, the Mail & Guardian reported that he was appointed special adviser to Deputy President David Mabuza, who died last year.
Fast forward to June this year and Mphego reportedly denied claims he had been involved in raiding Mfazi’s home after Mfazi died.
Bigger picture
Meanwhile, the SAPS remains the centre of controversy.
The former general’s arrest, announced on Tuesday, comes just a day after National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola returned to work.
Masemola took over his role again six months after he was criminally charged, and later cleared, in a case central to South Africa’s unprecedented law enforcement scandal.
The overall scandal hinges on accusations that KwaZulu-Natal police boss Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi first made in July last year, that a cartel, later identified as the Big Five, had infiltrated the country’s criminal justice sector, politics and private security.
During the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, created to investigate Mkhwanazi’s accusations, a witness testified about a R286-million cocaine interception and referenced Mfazi, saying he had tipped off Mfazi before the drug was seized.
Mfazi died a day before that interception, an incident police are now investigating as murder. DM
This story was updated to name the former general as Mulangi Mphego after he appeared in court. (Updated: 20 October 2026)
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