Hearing record
Day 145
Witness: Advocate Andrea Johnson
Evidence led by Advocate Mahlape Sello SC
Day two for the IDAC head: Andrea Johnson concedes her directorate erred on its mandate in the Khumalo case, disputes 'soliciting' an affidavit from an MP, and answers a commissioner's charge that IDAC misused its power - before the hearing adjourns early on medical grounds.
The day in brief
What you need to know
- Johnson conceded she had erred in concluding that the corruption case against Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo fell within IDAC's mandate - a concession about the legal test applied to the section 27 referral.
- She disputed that IDAC 'solicited' an affidavit from National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams - 'we're not supposed to solicit' - but it emerged investigator Dylan Perumal had told Adams the case could not proceed without a specific affidavit from him.
- Adams's complaint helped trigger the 2025 arrests of seven Crime Intelligence officers, including Khumalo.
- Commissioner Sesi Baloyi SC put it to Johnson that IDAC had misused its power by moving against the officers too quickly and without a proper legislative basis; she answered 'no comment'.
- The hearing adjourned about an hour early after Johnson said her medication was having a debilitating effect.
Full coverage
The day, in depth
The mandate concession
On her second day, the head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC), Advocate Andrea Johnson, made the concession that framed the whole sitting: she accepted she had erred in concluding that the corruption case against Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo fell within IDAC's mandate. The point is not academic. IDAC is a creature of statute with no inherent powers, and the case against Khumalo and six co-accused rests on a section 27 referral. If the wrong legal test was applied in deciding the directorate had jurisdiction to take the matter on, that goes to the foundation of the prosecution - the very foundation the commission had spent Days 139 to 141 questioning through investigator Brian Padayachee.
'We're not supposed to solicit'
Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello SC pressed Johnson on whether IDAC had improperly requested - 'solicited' - an affidavit from National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams, whose complaint helped set the Crime Intelligence arrests in motion. Johnson objected to the word itself: 'I don't agree with solicited; we're not supposed to solicit.' But the evidence was that IDAC investigator Dylan Perumal had told Adams the directorate could not proceed without a specific affidavit from him - the kind of steer that, the questioning implied, sits awkwardly with a prosecutor's duty to receive complaints rather than shape them. Adams's affidavit helped trigger the 2025 arrests of seven Crime Intelligence officers, including unit head Khumalo; Adams himself later faced unrelated fraud charges, a fact that has fed the interference concern running through this part of the inquiry.
'Misuse of power' - and 'no comment'
Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC took the accusation furthest, putting it to Johnson that IDAC had misused its power by taking intrusive steps and moving against the Crime Intelligence officers too quickly, without a proper legislative basis for doing so. To that line of questioning Johnson repeatedly gave the same answer: 'no comment.' For the head of the country's specialist anti-corruption directorate to meet a commissioner's misuse-of-power charge with silence was, in itself, one of the day's more striking moments.
Adjourned early
Proceedings ended about an hour ahead of schedule after Johnson told the commission that medication she was taking was having a debilitating effect - a thread running through her appearances, given she had been hospitalised before finally taking the stand and had twice had her testimony postponed on medical grounds earlier in July.
In their words
Key moments from the record
“I don't agree with solicited. We're not supposed to solicit.”
“You took intrusive steps and action against these officers.”
Our analysis
The bottom line
The mandate concession is the day's real news. For weeks the commission had circled the question of whether IDAC had any business criminalising a SAPS appointment; on this day its own head accepted the directorate got the jurisdictional test wrong. That is a significant admission from the person at the top of the body that brought the charges, and it lends weight to the commission's running scepticism about the Khumalo prosecution.
The 'solicited affidavit' exchange matters for a subtler reason. A prosecuting authority is supposed to act on complaints, not manufacture the paperwork that makes a case possible. Evidence that an investigator told a complainant the case could not move without a particular affidavit invites exactly the question the commission is built to ask: was this an investigation following the evidence, or a case looking for a foundation?
None of this decides whether Khumalo or his co-accused are innocent - those are questions for their trial. But a public watching IDAC move at speed against Crime Intelligence, while larger corruption files sit unprosecuted, is entitled to weigh a mandate concession and a misuse-of-power charge that drew only 'no comment'. The commission's report will have to reckon with both.
Analysis is the archive’s own comment on the public proceedings, grounded in the record above. It weighs the evidence and the process; questions of individual guilt are for the courts and the commission to decide. Everyone named is presumed innocent.
On the record
Who testified this day
Follow the threads
Who Advocate Andrea Johnson connects to
In the room & on the record
Counsel, the panel and sources
Evidence led by
- Advocate Mahlape Sello SC
On the panel
- Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)
- Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC
- Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC