Pretoria - Media reports alleging that National Police Commissioner General Bheki Cele has been fired "can only be a product of editorial incompetence or corruption", says the SAPS.
In a statement, police denied that Cele had ever been informed that he had been fired as National Police Commissioner or that he had accepted an ambassadorial posting to Canada.
SAPS is expected to take up the matter further with the newspaper that published the story.
"In line with the SAPS' fervent conviction that the newspaper that published this manufactured story cannot produce a single document to back up its assertions or point to, at least, two independent sources for its story, the organisation will be writing to the proprietors of the newspaper in question to request that they institute an internal investigation into the underlying factors behind the shocking lapse in basic quality control and accuracy check processes that led to the story being published," it said.
SAPS will ask the newspaper's owners to release the findings of their investigation within 21 days.
Police further assured the public that Cele was "entrenched" in his position as National Commissioner.
The "dirty tricks" employed by those who did not want to see government succeed in eradicating crime would not distract or destabilise police, SAPS said.
"As for the disinformation campaign that elements of the criminal underworld and their allies within our society have been running with the assistance of some of their friends in the media, the SAPS would like to remind South Africans that the Public Protector did not find any evidence of corrupt and illegal activity in the so-called police lease saga," it added.
Cele expressed confidence in the process put in the place by President Jacob Zuma, after the Public Protector's report was published.
"Over the past year or so, I have been more than careful not to engage in any manner that may have given rise to accusations that I sought to interfere with the freedom of the media. I have availed myself at all times to answer any question anyone may have had to ask of me.
"In the final analysis, for the sake of our hard-won democracy, I hope that media practioners are awake to spot enemies of media freedom even if they are within their own ranks," Cele said.
