Hearing record

Day 147

24 July 2026

Evidence led by Advocate Adila Hassim SC

Four months of sick notes meet CCTV: the commission hears Suleiman Carrim's latest bid to postpone his part-heard evidence in open session, and is told that the businessman too ill to testify spent an afternoon at a Cape Town mall.

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Awaiting portrait

The day in brief

What you need to know

Carrim asked for his postponement application to be heard in camera; news organisations opposed it, and the chairperson ruled on 23 July that it would be heard in open session, on condition that the details of his medical condition were not disclosed.
Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim SC told the commission that on 14 July Carrim spent an authorised four-hour excursion at a mall in Durbanville, Cape Town, entering a Woolworths store and a Kauai eatery.
His doctor's account described it as a chaperoned outing from 1pm to 5pm, subject to strict authorisation and search protocols; CCTV footage exists but was not screened publicly.
Cellphone geolocation data was put to the commission showing he leaves the medical facility almost every day and is out for at least eight hours at a time, which Hassim SC said contradicted affidavits from his wife and his doctor about restricted movement.
Hassim SC asked the commission to order an independent medical assessment.
This was his fifth application to postpone the continuation of his evidence.
Chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga was openly sceptical of another date being met - 'an educated guess would lead one to say we can't hold our breath' - and called the claim that only Carrim could supply his companies' auditors' names, outstanding since March, 'patently false'.
The commission reserved its ruling; 14 August 2026 was flagged as a possible resumption date.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

Who Carrim is, and why this matters

Suleiman Carrim is a North West businessman whom the commission's evidence leaders have described, alongside Hangwani (Morgan) Maumela, as one of the apparent funders behind Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala and the roughly R360 million SAPS health-services tender scored by Matlala's company Medicare24. He testified on 9 and 10 March 2026, telling the commission that 'Mogotsi and Matlala played me' out of millions, and his evidence has been part-heard ever since. He is a link in the money chain the commission is trying to trace, and the outstanding portion of his testimony - including the identity of his companies' auditors - goes to that chain. He is presumed innocent and the allegations against him are untested.

The fight over privacy

Carrim wanted the postponement application itself heard in camera, which would have kept both the medical case for the delay and the argument against it out of public view. News organisations opposed a wholly private hearing. On 23 July the chairperson ruled that the application would be heard in open session with conditions: proceedings would be public, but the specifics of Carrim's medical condition would not be disclosed. That balance - the public entitled to see why a witness is not testifying, the witness entitled to medical privacy - is the same one the commission struck earlier for Witness M, in the opposite direction.

The mall

The evidence that shaped the day was an outing. Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim SC told the commission that on 14 July, Carrim had spent four hours at a mall in Durbanville in Cape Town's northern suburbs, going into a Woolworths store and a Kauai eatery. The commission had footage; it was not screened publicly. Carrim's doctor's account did not dispute the outing but framed it as a chaperoned excursion between 1pm and 5pm, authorised by the facility and subject to search protocols. Hassim SC's argument was that whatever the label, it demonstrated day-to-day functioning capacity - and she did not rest it on one afternoon. Cellphone geolocation data, she said, showed Carrim leaving the facility almost every single day and staying out for at least eight hours, sometimes longer, which she put against affidavits from his wife and his doctor describing restricted movement. On that basis she asked the commission to order an independent medical assessment.

The chairperson's patience, and the missing auditors

Madlanga did not hide his scepticism. Asked in effect whether a fresh date would hold, he said an educated guess would lead one to say the commission could not hold its breath. He also returned to a much smaller and more telling point: since March the commission has been waiting for the names of the auditors of Carrim's companies, and has been told that only Carrim can provide them. Madlanga called that claim patently false. A company's auditors are a matter of record; the suggestion that a hospitalised man is the sole possible source for them is the kind of detail that shapes how a panel reads everything else. The commission reserved its ruling, with 14 August 2026 mentioned as a possible resumption.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“An educated guess would lead one to say we can't hold our breath.”

Madlanga on another date. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, on the prospect that Carrim's evidence would in fact resume as scheduled.

Our analysis

The bottom line

This was a procedural day that carried more weight than most substantive ones, because it went to a problem the commission has faced all year: a witness who cannot be compelled to be well. Carrim's evidence is part-heard, his health is genuinely documented, and the commission has neither the power nor the appetite to force a sick man into the box. The counterweight the evidence leaders reached for was not a medical opinion but a factual one - what a person actually does with their days.

The Woolworths and Kauai detail will be the line that travels, and it deserves a caveat: an authorised, chaperoned four-hour outing from a facility is not proof that a person can withstand hours of hostile cross-examination, and the doctor's framing was not contradicted. What it does do is shift the burden. Once the commission can point to a specific afternoon, the general assertion of unfitness has to become a specific one.

The auditors point is the quieter scandal. A postponement is at least contestable on medical grounds; a four-month failure to produce the names of your own companies' auditors is not, and the chairperson said so in terms usually reserved for the end of a panel's patience. Watch that ruling, and watch 14 August.

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

Testified · part-heard, ruling reserved

Suleiman Carrim

Businessman

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Follow the threads

Who Suleiman Carrim connects to

Accuses of deceiving him

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Related case files

Case file · Tender fraud

Medicare24 SAPS tender

A R360 million police medical tender, about R228 million paid, a web of alleged funders - and a central accused who pleaded guilty, then withdrew the deal and now heads to trial.

Read the case file →

In the room & on the record

Counsel, the panel and sources

Evidence led by

Advocate Adila Hassim SC

On the panel

Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)
Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC

Sources

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