Hearing record
Day 152
Evidence led by Advocate Mahlape Sello SC
A third week on IDAC, and the directorate keeps supplying its own witnesses: another senior investigator takes the stand, Johnson is to be put on formal notice, and the unit she ran is now under a six-month reset.
The day in brief
What you need to know
- The commission continued hearing evidence about the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, with a senior IDAC investigator set down to testify.
- Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy's evidence from Day 151 is part-heard; she resumes the following Tuesday.
- The commission's evidence leaders indicated they would issue former IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson a Rule 3 notice so she can answer the new allegations aired on Day 151.
- Three senior IDAC investigators - chief investigator Dylan Perumal, senior investigator Brian Padayachee and investigator Suneel Bellochun - were suspended the previous day pending disciplinary processes.
- Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi and National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Andy Mothibi have given IDAC six months to reform; skills and lifestyle audits of all 212 employees are due by 14 August 2026.
- The Justice Ministry was reported to be seeking a candidate from outside the directorate to lead it in the interim.
Full coverage
The day, in depth
The order the commission is working in
Three sitting weeks have now been given over to the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, and the sequence is deliberate. First the commission tested the case IDAC built against Crime Intelligence, through its lead investigator across Days 139 to 141. Then it tested the person who authorised it, through six days of evidence from Advocate Andrea Johnson. Then, on Day 151, it heard from someone inside the same unit who says the case was directed from the top. Friday continued that pattern by calling more of the directorate's own staff. The commission is not asking outsiders what happened inside IDAC; it is asking IDAC.
Rule 3 and the recall
The evidence leaders signalled that Johnson would be issued a Rule 3 notice. Under the commission's rules, a Rule 3 notice is the formal step by which a person implicated in evidence is told what has been said about them and given the opportunity to respond - it is a procedural protection, not an accusation, and it is the mechanism by which Johnson will be brought back to answer the recorded call, the 'Project Diversion' allegation and the account of how the suspect list was assembled. She had already concluded six days of evidence on Day 150 before those allegations were made.
What changed outside the chamber this week
The commission's evidence produced consequences faster this week than in any comparable stretch of the inquiry. Johnson resigned on 26 July and the President accepted it on 27 July. The National Prosecuting Authority provisionally withdrew the Crime Intelligence case the same day. On 29 July the chairperson refused Suleiman Carrim's fifth postponement bid. On 30 July the Justice Minister and the NDPP suspended three senior IDAC investigators and placed the directorate under a six-month reset with skills and lifestyle audits of all 212 employees, and three City of Ekurhuleni heads of department were dismissed, two of them implicated in evidence before this commission. None of that is a finding by the commission; these are decisions taken by other office-holders in response to what the commission has heard.
Our analysis
The bottom line
The inquiry was set up to examine whether criminal syndicates had captured parts of the police, the prosecution and the intelligence services. Three weeks on IDAC have turned one of its instruments into one of its subjects: the directorate created to prosecute corruption is now the institution being audited, suspended and reset.
That inversion is worth stating carefully. Nothing the commission has heard is a finding, and IDAC's investigators are entitled to answer from the stand, which several of them are yet to do. What is established is narrower and still significant: the prosecuting authority withdrew the flagship case, the executive suspended three of the investigators who built it, and the unit's own prosecutor gave evidence against its former head.
This entry was written while Friday's proceedings were still running and will be extended once the day's evidence is on the record. Everyone named is presumed innocent.
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.
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)
Sources
- EWN - More IDAC officials expected to testify at Madlanga Commission (31 Jul 2026) ↗
- TimesLIVE - Madlanga commission prompts audit, lifestyle checks for all IDAC employees (31 Jul 2026) ↗
- eNCA - Livestream: IDAC senior investigator takes the stand at the Madlanga Commission (31 Jul 2026) ↗
- SABC News - Madlanga Commission continues to hear IDAC-related testimony ↗