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Hearing record

Day 148

Witness: Advocate Andrea Johnson

Evidence led by Advocate Mahlape Sello SC, Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC

The day IDAC's Crime Intelligence case collapsed: its own officials are heard on tape disputing a statement their chief investigator filed in court, the prosecuting authority provisionally withdraws the charges, and the President accepts Andrea Johnson's resignation - while she is still on the stand.

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The day in brief

What you need to know

  • President Cyril Ramaphosa accepted Advocate Andrea Johnson's resignation as head of IDAC with immediate effect on this day; she had asked on 26 July to be released within 24 hours, and testified anyway.
  • The commission heard recorded voice notes in which two of IDAC's own team - a prosecutor and an investigator on the case - disputed the authenticity of a supplementary statement, marked 'A1', that chief investigator Dylan Perumal filed in court and before the commission.
  • One said only four statements were taken in her presence at the 6 January interview with complainant MP Fadiel Adams in Cape Town; the other said the A1 'could not have been possible' that day.
  • Johnson accepted the account did not hold: 'procedurally it does not make sense; you cannot have one team together, same day, same place'.
  • Commissioner Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC said the material pointed to serious misconduct.
  • Johnson conceded IDAC investigators 'may well be conducting investigations of individuals that are not authorised', and that the directorate was 'not supposed to solicit' complaints from the public.
  • She conceded she never personally verified Brigadier Dineo Mokwele's qualifications before charges were brought - 'I relied on the briefing from my team. I trusted them implicitly. I now see the facts I received then were incorrect' - withdrew her earlier description of the appointment as a 'token appointment', and apologised to Mokwele.
  • Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello SC raised the possibility that the section 27 referral founding the whole case was fraudulent: 'Where that potentially lands me, are we confronted with a fraudulent Section 27?'
  • Chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga announced the commission will institute criminal proceedings against a person who, on the face of it, deliberately disclosed the identity of a witness who testified anonymously. He named neither the person nor the witness.
  • The same day, the NPA confirmed that NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi had signed a PROVISIONAL withdrawal, before plea, of the corruption case against Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and his co-accused.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

Resigning and testifying on the same day

Andrea Johnson wrote to the National Director of Public Prosecutions on Sunday 26 July asking to be released from her post as investigating director of IDAC within 24 hours. On Monday 27 July, acting on a recommendation from Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi supported by NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi, President Cyril Ramaphosa accepted the resignation with immediate effect in terms of section 12(8)(a) of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, waiving her three-month notice period. Her letter said the step would serve the institutions and the country best. She was in the witness box at the Madlanga Commission the same day - a fourth day of testimony that would prove the most damaging yet to the case her directorate had built.

The A1 statement, and IDAC's own investigators on tape

The centrepiece of the day was a document marked 'A1': an additional statement attributed to National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams, the complainant whose section 27 referral founded the whole Crime Intelligence prosecution. IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal later filed the A1 in court and before the commission. Two members of his own team disputed that it could exist. A prosecutor and an investigator on the case had recorded voice notes challenging its authenticity, and those recordings were put before the commission. (Outlets give materially different first names for the prosecutor, so this archive does not name either official until the record settles; both are IDAC officials who worked the docket.) The three had travelled to Cape Town together to interview Adams on 6 January 2025; the prosecutor confirmed that in her presence only four supplementary statements were taken, and asked why two investigating officers sitting in the same boardroom would have taken different statements on the same day. The investigator was blunter: there was no way the A1 could have been obtained that day. The allegation, put at its highest by the reporting, is that a statement was fabricated - and a signature forged - to strengthen the case against senior Crime Intelligence officers. It is an allegation; Perumal has not been found to have done anything wrong, is expected to give evidence himself, and is presumed innocent.

'Procedurally it does not make sense'

Johnson did not defend the timeline. She told the commission that procedurally the account did not make sense, and that one team, in the same place on the same day, could not have produced what the record showed. Commissioner Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC said the material pointed to serious misconduct. Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello SC took it further still, asking where the evidence left her: 'Where that potentially lands me, are we confronted with a fraudulent Section 27?' For a head of a prosecuting directorate to concede, from the stand, that a founding document in her unit's flagship case cannot be reconciled with her own investigators' accounts is about as far as an institutional defence can retreat while still being mounted.

Criminal proceedings over a leaked anonymous witness

Away from the Johnson evidence, the chairperson made an announcement of his own. Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga told the hearing that someone had disclosed the identity of a witness who testified anonymously, and that on the face of it the disclosure was deliberate. The commission, he said, would institute criminal proceedings against that person under the Commissions Act and the commission's regulations - 'this is a matter the commission takes very seriously and it simply must act in these circumstances'. He named neither the person nor the witness, and this archive does not either: anonymity orders exist precisely because witnesses in this inquiry have described surveillance, threats and moved families, and a single published name can undo the protection the commission granted.

Unauthorised investigations, and the solicitation problem

Under questioning from Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC on how IDAC's investigations were opened and run, Johnson made two further concessions. She accepted that investigators in her unit 'may well be conducting investigations of individuals that are not authorised' - that is, matters running outside the directorate's legal mandate and outside her authorisation. And she accepted that IDAC was 'not supposed to solicit' complaints directly from members of the public, the point on which the commission had already heard that Perumal told Adams the directorate could not proceed without a specific affidavit from him. Read together with her Day 145 concession that she erred in finding the Khumalo matter fell within IDAC's mandate, the picture is of a directorate whose gatekeeping the commission found, on its own witness's evidence, to be weak.

The qualifications she never checked

The original charge against Brigadier Dineo Mokwele and those who appointed her rested on the proposition that she was unqualified for a technical post running Crime Intelligence's Technical Support Services. Johnson conceded she had never personally verified Mokwele's qualifications before charges were filed, saying she relied on the briefing from her team and acknowledging that the information she was given was incorrect. She withdrew her earlier characterisation of the appointment as a 'token appointment'. Mokwele holds a mechatronics-engineering diploma and an industrial-engineering degree and had worked at BMW - facts the commission had established over Days 139 to 141, and which the prosecuting authority would cite the same day in dropping the case.

And then the NPA withdrew the case

While Johnson was giving this evidence, the National Prosecuting Authority confirmed that NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi had completed his review and signed a withdrawal of the corruption case flowing from the Mokwele appointment. The precise wording matters: the withdrawal is PROVISIONAL and was made before plea, on the express basis that the investigation is incomplete rather than that it has been concluded in the accused's favour. Mothibi's letter recorded that the matter may not be re-enrolled, nor any fresh decision to prosecute taken, without his express written approval. NPA spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said: 'For now, with the facts before him, the NDPP decided to withdraw the matter after the review process', adding that 'it still has to go through the processes of court so that it is formally withdrawn'. Those charged in the June 2025 arrests - Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo, Brigadier Dineo Mokwele, Major-General Philani Lushaba, Major-General Nosipho Madondo, Major-General Josias Lekalakala, Brigadier Phindile Ncube and Zwelithini Gabela - all fall away for now. (Outlets differ on whether the count is six or seven, chiefly over whether Mokwele is listed as an accused or as the subject of the appointment; the arrest record supports seven.) A provisional withdrawal is not an acquittal, and Mokwele's lawyers said within a day that they were unhappy with it.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“Why would two investigating officers sitting in the same boardroom have taken two different statements on the same day? I can confirm that in my presence there were only four statements taken.”
An IDAC prosecutor on two statements from one boardroom. An IDAC prosecutor who worked the docket, in a recorded voice note played to the commission, on the disputed 'A1' statement. Outlets give conflicting first names for her, so this archive does not name her. The allegation is untested; all named are presumed innocent.
“This A1 could not have been possible because on that day we only obtained the supplementaries.”
The investigator: it could not have happened. An IDAC investigator on the same team, in a recorded voice note, on the 6 January 2025 interview with MP Fadiel Adams in Cape Town.
“There is someone who disclosed the identity of a witness that testified anonymously. On the face of it, it appears this was done deliberately.”
Madlanga on the leaked identity of an anonymous witness. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, announcing that the commission would lay criminal charges over the disclosure. He named neither the person responsible nor the witness.
“I relied on the briefing from my team. I trusted them implicitly. I now see the facts I received then were incorrect.”
Johnson on the briefing she trusted. Advocate Andrea Johnson, on having never personally verified Brigadier Dineo Mokwele's qualifications before charges were brought.
“Procedurally it does not make sense - you cannot have one team together, same day, same place.”
Johnson concedes the timeline. Advocate Andrea Johnson, then hours from ceasing to be IDAC's head, on the account of how the disputed statement was produced.
“For now, with the facts before him, the NDPP decided to withdraw the matter after the review process.”
The NPA on the withdrawal. NPA spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago, confirming that NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi had signed a provisional withdrawal of the case against Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and his co-accused.

Our analysis

The bottom line

Three things happened on one Monday: a directorate head's resignation was accepted, her unit's flagship prosecution was provisionally withdrawn by the national prosecuting authority, and the commission heard her own officials, on tape, dispute the authenticity of a document that helped found it. Any one of those would have been the day's story. Together they mark the point at which the Crime Intelligence prosecutions stopped being a contested case and became, in the public record, a collapsed one.

It is worth being precise about what collapsed and what did not. A provisional withdrawal before plea is not an acquittal and not a finding that anyone acted criminally in bringing the case; it is the NDPP saying that on the facts now before him the matter cannot proceed, while reserving the file. Mothibi expressly barred re-enrolment or any fresh prosecution decision without his written approval - which cuts both ways: it keeps the accused out of court, and it keeps the case formally alive. Mokwele's lawyers made exactly that objection within a day, saying they were disappointed the withdrawal was framed as provisional and signalling they may seek a permanent stay of prosecution. Equally, the allegation that a statement was fabricated is exactly that: an allegation, made by colleagues, which Dylan Perumal is entitled to answer, is expected to answer from the stand, and which no tribunal has determined.

What this day does establish beyond argument is the commission's utility. The Madlanga Commission has no power to prosecute or to withdraw a prosecution. Yet by putting IDAC's own internal contradictions on a public record and testing them against a former director in the box, it produced within four days a resignation accepted by the President and a withdrawal signed by the NDPP. That is the mechanism working roughly as intended, and it should be said plainly.

The uncomfortable question the day leaves behind is the one the commission has circled since Day 139. If six senior officers could be arrested, charged and carried for more than a year on a case that unravelled this quickly under scrutiny, the failure is not only evidentiary but institutional - a matter of who authorised what, on what briefing, and with what check. Johnson's answer, repeatedly, was that she relied on her team. Her team's answer will be the next thing worth hearing.

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 · resigned as IDAC head

Advocate Andrea Johnson

Head, Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC)

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Follow the threads

Who Advocate Andrea Johnson connects to

Alleged to have shielded him

Major-General Feroz Khan

A whistleblower alleged Johnson, as an NPA prosecutor in 2018, leaked an assault-case docket to Khan before he was charged. Testifying on Day 144, she said her 'memory needed jogging', called Khan 'very affable', and invoked her right against self-incrimination. Untested; both presumed innocent.

View profile →Her directorate charged him

Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo

IDAC charged the Crime Intelligence head in June 2025 over the Mokwele appointment. Johnson conceded at the commission that she had erred on IDAC's mandate and had never verified Mokwele's qualifications; the NPA withdrew the case on 27 July 2026, the day her resignation was accepted. Untested; both presumed innocent.

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Related case files

Case file · IDAC vs Crime Intelligence

Khumalo / Mokwele appointment

IDAC charged a Crime Intelligence boss over a civilian's appointment. Eight days of testimony left the commission asking what the crime actually was - and by the end the prosecuting authority had provisionally withdrawn the case and IDAC's head had resigned.

Read the case file →

In the room & on the record

Counsel, the panel and sources

Evidence led by

  • Advocate Mahlape Sello SC
  • Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC

On the panel

  • Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)
  • Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC
  • Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC

Sources

← Earlier in timeDay 14724 July 2026More recent →Day 14928 July 2026