A person who complained to the Hawks’ watchdog feared for her life and had to be helped into a witness protection programme, Parliament has heard.
Charmaine Marshall, the director in the office of the DPCI Judge, told Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police on Thursday that the complainant had been victimised.
“In terms of a complainant that also was victimised and feared for her life, we assisted in getting her into a witness protection programme,” Marshall said.
She is not the only one.
Marshall said the office is dealing with three cases in which people who reported to it say they have been victimised. Two involve what she called “quite serious allegations.” In the third, a Hawks member says he is being victimised.
“This is being addressed with the head of the Hawks, and we are following it up consistently,” she said.
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard had raised the three complaints from Hawks members. She said they included allegations of victimisation, intimidation and threats, “similar to what we very often see in SAPS.”
She asked how the office protects people who report to it without identifying them.
Marshall did not describe any specific safeguards for complainants. She said the office’s own investigators have not received threats so far. If they do, she said, the office would ask SAPS Crime Intelligence to carry out threat assessments.
The office said a criminal case has been opened against a former Hawks member for interfering with its work. Interfering with the office’s investigations is a criminal offence. The case is still being investigated by SAPS.
Retired Judge Malesela Legodi, who heads the office, said people are now coming forward from inside the Hawks.
“We are now seeing people that we can regard as whistleblowers coming from within the Hawks themselves, who would give us information as to what is happening,” he said.
There is currently no law that specifically protects them when they report to his office.
Even when the office finds against Hawks members, it can’t make the Hawks act.
“In terms of the legislation currently, we don’t have a leg to stand on to enforce it,” Marshall said.
Legodi said the office has had to resort to pressure instead.
“We have adopted a style of, sort of, intimidation, so to put it,” he said.
When the office sends an adverse finding, it sets a date for a response. It also warns that it will have to tell Parliament what happened to the recommendation. When the Hawks refuse, the office asks for their reasons and says those will be reported to Parliament too.
“To a certain extent, it works,” Legodi said.
Kohler Barnard said the committee’s own analysis showed 13 adverse findings against the Hawks, and two matters where the Hawks reported no wrongdoing. Marshall said there was one case last year where recommendations were not implemented. She could not say why, and promised to send the reasons to Parliament.
The office’s own records are also in poor shape. Marshall admitted it has never had an electronic case management system.
“Manual record keeping let us down in this instance,” she said, explaining the discrepancies MPs had found in the office’s complaint figures.
An electronic system is waiting on funding. So are two new investigator posts and a team leader the office has asked for.
Kohler Barnard asked what came of an investigation into R1.89 million in irregular expenditure at the office in the last financial year.
Legodi said he wants to stay “as far as I could” from administrative matters, and that administration should stay with the director. He did not say what the investigation found.
Marshall also told MPs that Section 22 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which allows police to search without a warrant in urgent cases, “seems to be abused.”
The office received 102 complaints against the Hawks in 2025/26, the highest since it opened. Legodi has called for its recommendations to be made binding.
Deputy Police Minister Polly Boshielo said government supports this, and that legislation will be brought to the committee. Whether the office should be separated from the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service remains open. Boshielo called it “the elephant in the room.”
