DPCI faces crippling staff shortages amid rising corruption cases

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) was operating with almost half the personnel provided for in its organogram, divisional commissioner Patrick Mbotho said on Wednesday.

Mbotho said the DPCI's staff establishment stood at 2,688, including detectives and support staff. The entity is supposed to have 5,332 personnel.

“In this financial year 2025/26, the police management and we agreed that we are going to prioritise 500 posts. The 500 is to be made up of 300 posts to be advertised internally for us to source within police investigators, but the other 200 is reserved for external advertisements for those posts we don’t have capacity internally, such as forensic accountants.”

He also said they were in the process of capacitating the cybersecurity environment.

“We think we can enhance our capacity within cybercrime and forensic accountancy,” he said.

Mbotho made the statement when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa).

The DPCI and the National Prosecuting Authority were to brief Scopa on corruption cases involving government departments, public entities, municipalities, and other high-profile cases referred by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).

Mbotho was quizzed after in their presentation failed to give factors that impact the DPCI investigations, despite promising to do so in the presentation shared with Scopa.

When pressed on the matter, Major-General Mmeli Makinyane said some of the cases they handled needed skills they necessarily did not have.

“We have to outsource to get to the bottom of those cases. The presentation did not get to that information,” Makinyane said.

He also said resource issues have significantly impacted them and resulted in a delay in finalising investigations.

Mbotho confirmed there was some expertise they did not have.

“We have limited forensic accounting. We have to procure that. Our procurement is not the fastest,” he said.

Mbotho added that one of the reasons for the long investigations, especially in matters related to the defence force, was the time it took for declassification of information.

This prompted Scopa chairperson Songezo Zibi to cite from presentation from the Hawks, which Mbotho and Makinyane did not refer to.

The note observed that capacity impacted on the workload and necessitated the prioritisation of matters for investigation.

“Resource allocation can compromise the quality and illustrate challenge to deliver optimum results,” he read.

Zibi said the number of cases DPCI get not just from the SIU, arrived in a situation where they have to choose which cases to investigate and which to look at later.

Independent Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) head of investigation Matthew Sesoko said they were handling complex matters.

“The nature of investigations takes longer to complete. They straddle through different jurisdictions.  We have to contend with extradition applications,” Sesoko said.

He also said they don’t have in-house capacity in forensic digital investigation.

“We have to outsource that investigative part,” Sesoko said, adding that there were tons of data that they have to go through and analyse to enable them conduct investigations.

“That in itself takes long to complete these investigations.” 

Sesoko added that since the IDAC was proclaimed, it has worked with limited capacity.

Nkebe Kanyane, special director to the NPA Special Commercial Crime Unit (SCCU), said not all matters referred by the SIU to the NPA ended up with the DPCI.

“Some of the matters in NPA that were referred would not be in DPCI because of a lack of complexity. DPCI attends matters of a complex nature,” she said.

Kanyane also said matters falling within certain criteria of amounts were referred to the SAPS.

She stated unlike in the past, where matters were referred to their SCCU at national office, they were now referred by the SIU to regions to the Directors of Public Prosecutions.

Speaking on the National Lottery Commission cases, Kanyane said they were complex and involved many entities and individuals that created trusts and companies used as vehicles to defraud the commission.

Kanyane said there were several bank accounts,  and it took time to get bank statements, and forensic firms to analyse the money flow and link implicated people to the entities.

She explained that it was premature to enrol the low-handling fruit cases when the investigations were not complete.

Kanyane added that some of the delays in processing the cases were due to challenges mounted in courts by the accused before the trials got under way.

mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za