PRETORIA (AP) — South Africa's top police officer, Fannie Masemola, has appeared in court in relation to a corruption scandal that has seen at least 12 other senior police officers arrested and charged by prosecutors.
Masemola, who remains in his position as head of the police, faces four counts of violating the Public Finance Management Act, a law that regulates the government's awarding of contracts, in relation to an allegedly corrupt 360 million-rand ($21 million) contract to provide health and well-being services to police officers.
He made his first appearance on Tuesday to be formally charged after he was summoned to appear in court earlier this month. He is yet to plea to the charges, and could face up to five years in prison or a fine if found guilty.
It is alleged that the contract was irregularly awarded and some of the police officers received bribes from the winning bidders.
While details of Masemola's charges were not all spelt out in court pending further investigations, the charges relate to his responsibilities as the accounting officer for the police service.
The contract has since been canceled by the police.
The contract is the subject of a commission of inquiry appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year to probe wide-ranging allegations of corruption within the police service.
Lawmakers have also conducted a separate parliamentary probe into the allegations.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Masemola's case would be joined to that of 16 others accused, including the 12 police officers.
The officers, one of them a major-general and several of them brigadiers — some of the highest ranks in the South African police — were all released on bail.
They are accused of corruption alongside a businessman who allegedly has links to organized crime and whose company is at the heart of the multimillion-dollar police contract.
The businessman, Vusi “Cat” Matlala, is one of several witnesses who has testified on alleged links between senior police officers and crime bosses.
Matlala is being held at a maximum-security prison on attempted murder and other charges in an unrelated case.
Speaking to reporters after his appearance, Masemola downplayed calls for him to step down, saying that decison lay with the president and that he was continuing with his normal duties.
Ramaphosa's office has said he has noted the charges against Masemola and will address the matter “in accordance with the law.”
The case has been postponed to May 13.
South Africa's national police commissioner Fannie Masemola appears in the Pretoria Magistrates Court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/ Mogomotsi Magome)
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who was convicted of lying during testimony at the OJ Simpson murder trial, has died. He was 74.
Fuhrman was one of the first two police detectives sent to investigate the 1994 killings of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. He reported finding a bloody glove at Simpson’s home but his credibility came under attack during the trial as the defense raised the prospect of racial bias.
Under cross-examination, Fuhrman testified that he had never made anti-Black racial slurs in the past decade, but a recording showed he had done so repeatedly.
Lynn Acebedo, the chief deputy coroner in Kootenai County, Idaho, said that Fuhrman died May 12. The county does not release the cause of death as a rule.
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and law professor who was a legal strategist on Simpson’s defense “Dream Team,” said Fuhrman was a “much better detective than he was a witness.”
“He’s very smart, and you know, a very, very aggressive detective. Ultimately his actions helped us win the O.J. case because of his use of the ‘n’ word,” Dershowitz said Monday evening. “I got to know him later, after it was all over, and we had a cordial relationship.”
Fuhrman retired from the Los Angeles Police Department after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal. He subsequently moved to Idaho with his family and set up a 20-acre (eight-hectare) farm, raising chickens, goats, sheep and llamas.
In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with perjury and pleaded no contest. He later became a TV and radio commentator and wrote the book “Murder in Brentwood” about the killings.
A criminal-court jury found Simpson, a former star NFL running back and actor, not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman. He served nine years in prison on unrelated charges and died in Las Vegas of prostate cancer in 2024 at the age of 76.
Fuhrman’s father left when he was 7 years old, and Fuhrman often cared for his younger brother while his mother worked. As an adult, he joined the Marines and then the Los Angeles Police Department.
Golden reported from Seattle.
FILE - In this June 15, 1995 file photo, O.J. Simpson, left, grimaces as he tries on one of the leather gloves prosecutors say he wore the night his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered in a Los Angeles courtroom. (AP Photo/Sam Mircovich, Pool, File)
FILE - Los Angeles Police Department Det. Mark Fuhrman, foreground, and Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, rear, crane their heads to look at an overhead monitor during the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
FILE - Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman shows the jury in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial evidence during testimony Friday, March 10, 1995, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, Pool, File)
