Police minister Bheki Cele has disputed that the looting during the July unrest was driven by poverty and economic struggles of the looters.

On Monday, Cele was on the stand as the first witness of the second leg of the SA Human Rights Commission’s investigative hearings into the deadly riots and looting that followed the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma.

“You don’t get your car to go loot if you are poor and hungry. I remember one guy that could not put this mattress on top of his car,” Cele said.

Cele said the riots had the hallmarks of a failed but planned insurrection.

“This appetite of completely undermining the elected structure, those are elements of a coup d’etat or insurrection. One part of it [is to] illegitimise the structures that are supporting that elected government. Despite the fact that police also did have a problem and could have done much better, there was a big campaign of delegitimising them,” he said.

Cele said this also included the campaign to scare off the police as they tried to contain the unrest.

“I remember there was a message that said ‘tell all those police that are living in Umlazi not to come back to Umlazi, [and that] even if they come back they won’t find their wives and children'. There was a lot of fear within the police,” he said.

He said the SAPS and other components of the security cluster had been hit hard by budget cuts imposed by the government over the years as this undermined efficiency.

“The budget of the security cluster, not just the police, has really found that dry white season where things are just not coming. We have been victim of cutting. I don’t know the figures, but somebody told me that from 2016 up to this point we have been cut about R38bn instead of getting more,” he said.

Cele weighed in on allegations that he had refused to sign off money for intelligence gathering equipment which had apparently disabled crime intelligence from collecting intelligence in relation to the unrest.

“There was money that was requested by the police, which was underspent, to roll it over and that was R138m. They were given about R129m on 15 May 2021 by the Treasury. You are not going to tell me that there was no money then,” he said.

He said he had been told that the said amount from the Treasury had been for infrastructure but that he had pointed out to the SAPS that dealing with the riots was a pressing priority.

“I said you are not going to tell me that when the country is burning you took money to paint the buildings. That money was there,” he said.

Earlier during the testimony, Cele said that no intelligence was given to him by intelligence structures, including the SA Police Service’s crime intelligence division, despite clear signs that showed that the riots would take place.

“I am sure some deliberate decision was just taken not to brief [me] in terms of the crime intelligence,” Cele said.