Professor Mary De Haas

Professor Mary de Haas is an academic and long-standing observer of policing oversight in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere, whose complaints about the Provincial Task Team (PKTT) featured prominently in the commission's proceedings. Described as helpful during the apartheid era and the liberation struggle, she lodged numerous formal complaints against the task team, which police leadership characterised as lacking substance. Her correspondence to the Minister of Police and the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Policing raised systemic governance weaknesses, including allegations that the task team operated in parallel with, and sometimes outside, SAPS formal command oversight and budget structures. Her concerns were said to align with issues later identified in the Murry report, and she supported a motion for the recusal of a prosecutor, writing that the PKTT should be disbanded. Her complaints also referenced political interference by former Police Minister Cele.