Hearing record
Day 156
Witness: Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy
Evidence led by Advocate Segeels-Ncube
Ramsamy names a cabinet minister in the paper trail: a classified IGI report the watchdog had refused to hand over, flown to the Eastern Cape on the police minister's arrangement and forwarded by WhatsApp.
The day in brief
What you need to know
- Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy testified that suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu bypassed the prescribed procedure to get an Inspector-General of Intelligence report on Crime Intelligence officers to IDAC.
- The IGI had told IDAC in January 2025 that material from its live investigations could not be shared while those investigations were under way.
- By September 2025, IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal told Ramsamy that Mchunu had arranged for someone to fly to him in the Eastern Cape with a hard copy of the report.
- The report was still classified when Perumal received it, and had not been declassified before he forwarded it to Ramsamy by WhatsApp.
- Perumal had described the report as 'golden' because it was believed it would assist the case against Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and his senior colleagues.
- Ramsamy said the Intelligence Services Oversight Act prescribes specific channels for obtaining an IGI report and that they were not followed; the NPA had not authorised the report's use before this commission.
- She described a tense January 2025 meeting at which Perumal became agitated and used what was characterised as 'cowboy tactics', after which IGI advocate Jayashree Govender declined to cooperate.
- The commission also dealt with the ten-month delay in MP Fadiel Adams's statement; Madlanga called his frozen-laptop explanation 'unbelievable', and Parliament publicly disputed it that evening.
Full coverage
The day, in depth
The report the watchdog would not hand over
The Inspector-General of Intelligence is the statutory civilian watchdog over South Africa's intelligence services, and its investigative material is classified by default. Ramsamy told the commission that in January 2025 the IGI told IDAC plainly that information from investigations still under way could not be shared. That is not a technicality: it is the normal protection that stops a live oversight investigation being repurposed as someone else's prosecution file. On her evidence the report reached IDAC anyway, eight months later, and it did not come through the IGI.
The route it took instead
Ramsamy testified that in September 2025 IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal told her and colleagues that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu had arranged for someone to fly to him in the Eastern Cape carrying a hard copy of the IGI report. The report was still classified when it arrived and had not been declassified before Perumal forwarded it to her over WhatsApp. Perumal, she said, had called it 'golden', because it was believed it would help build the case against Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and his senior colleagues. Ramsamy's point to the commission was procedural and precise: the Intelligence Services Oversight Act prescribes specific channels for obtaining an IGI report, and on her account none of them were used. The National Prosecuting Authority had not authorised the report's use before this inquiry either.
'Cowboy tactics' at the IGI meeting
Ramsamy also described the meeting at which the normal route was closed off. In January 2025, at a session with the IGI's legal staff, she said Perumal became agitated and behaved in a way she characterised as 'cowboy tactics', after which IGI advocate Jayashree Govender declined to cooperate. Set against the September delivery, the sequence she put before the commission runs: the lawful request is made and refused, the meeting to press it goes badly, and eight months later the document arrives by another road entirely. It is her account; Perumal, who was suspended on 30 July 2026, has not answered it from the stand.
The minister in the chain
This is the first time in the IDAC arc that a serving member of the cabinet has been placed inside the paper trail by a witness who says she handled the paper. Senzo Mchunu was placed on special leave as Police Minister in July 2025 after Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's allegations, and the question of what he did with intelligence material has run through this inquiry from its first week. Ramsamy's evidence does not allege that he authored or altered anything; it alleges that he arranged for a classified document to be moved outside the channel the law provides. That is a serious allegation, it is untested, Mchunu has not answered it before this commission, and he is presumed innocent.
The laptop that Parliament says never broke
Separately, the commission returned to the delay in the statement of MP Fadiel Adams, the National Coloured Congress leader whose section 27 complaint founded the whole Crime Intelligence investigation. Adams attributed a ten-month delay in submitting his statement to a parliamentary laptop that persistently froze and had to go back for repairs repeatedly; chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga called the explanation 'unbelievable', and the delay had already forced his public testimony to be pushed back so the commission could review the statement. That evening Parliament issued a statement contradicting him outright: its ICT service desk records, it said, 'do not reflect any reported incident of persistent laptop malfunction, hardware failure, repeated freezing of the device, or the laptop being repeatedly submitted to ICT for repairs', with only routine user-access and account-support matters logged.
In their words
Key moments from the record
“All arrangements were made by Minister Mchunu for this witness to consult with Mr Perumal in the Eastern Cape.”
“The records do not reflect any reported incident of persistent laptop malfunction, hardware failure, repeated freezing of the device, or the laptop being repeatedly submitted to ICT for repairs.”
Our analysis
The bottom line
Every week of this arc has moved the allegation one link up the chain. The docket was badly built, then the investigator was accused of building it that way, then the director was accused of directing it, and now a minister is placed in the supply line for the intelligence that fed it. That progression is the reason the commission has stayed on IDAC for a month.
The specific allegation is narrow and that is what makes it dangerous. Nobody says Mchunu wrote or altered the IGI report. The claim is that a classified oversight document, which the watchdog had expressly declined to release while its own work was live, moved to the prosecuting investigators because a cabinet minister arranged for it to be carried to them. If accepted, the significance is not the content of the report at all - it is that the safeguard was routed around.
Read next to Day 154, where Ramsamy said Perumal told her the same minister had arranged a flight for a forklift-probe witness, a pattern emerges in her evidence: the minister's office appears as the logistics for an investigation it should have had no operational role in. It is one witness's account, twice, and the people named are entitled to answer it.
The Adams laptop exchange is a smaller story with a similar shape. The man whose complaint started the case gave an explanation for a ten-month delay, the chairperson did not believe it, and by nightfall the institution that issued the laptop had said its records do not support it. Nothing here is a finding. 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.
On the record
Who testified this day
Follow the threads
Who Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy connects to
Advocate Andrea Johnson
Ramsamy worked under Johnson at IDAC on the Crime Intelligence docket. Across Days 151, 154 and 156 she played a recording of a 26 July call in which Johnson allegedly advised her to leave the country rather than testify, gave evidence that Johnson drove 'Project Diversion', and described an alleged instruction to 'let him lie' so that General Fannie Masemola could be charged with perjury. Johnson has not yet answered; untested, both presumed innocent.
View profile →Prosecuted the case against him, then testified about how it was builtLieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo
Ramsamy was a state advocate on the docket that charged the Crime Intelligence head. Her Day 151 evidence was that the suspects were settled by the directorate's leadership before the case was made. The NPA provisionally withdrew the charges on 27 July 2026. Untested; all presumed innocent.
View profile →IDAC colleague on the same docketColonel Brian Padayachee
Both worked the Crime Intelligence matter - Padayachee as lead investigator who defended it across Days 139-141, Ramsamy as the state advocate who has since given evidence about how it was assembled. Padayachee was suspended on 30 July 2026 pending a disciplinary process; a suspension is not a finding and he is presumed innocent.
View profile →The other official on the Day 148 recordingsMantsha Robert Raphesu
Ramsamy and Raphesu are the two IDAC officials whose recorded voice notes, played on Day 148, disputed the authenticity of the 'A1' statement. Both later testified in person - she on Day 151, he on Day 152. Raphesu told the commission she had said she was under instruction not to give the investigating team documents. Untested; both presumed innocent.
View profile →IDAC colleague who also says the case was wrongAdvocate Peter Serunye
Serunye, a Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, took over the Crime Intelligence prosecution and testified on Day 153 that it was premature and that the corruption charge did not hold. He and Ramsamy give parallel accounts from the prosecuting side of the same docket. Untested.
View profile →Named him in IDAC's logistics twiceSenzo Mchunu
On Day 154 Ramsamy said Mchunu's office arranged a flight for a forklift-probe witness; on Day 156 she said he arranged for a still-classified IGI report to be carried to IDAC's chief investigator in the Eastern Cape. Mchunu has not answered either allegation before this commission; untested, presumed innocent.
View profile →The officer she says was to be trapped into perjuryLieutenant-General Fannie Masemola
On Day 154 Ramsamy testified that Johnson instructed the team to keep Masemola ignorant of IDAC investigations so he would mislead Parliament's portfolio committee and could be charged with perjury, and confirmed it amounted to a set-up. Untested; all named presumed innocent.
View profile →Disputed the 'A1' statement attributed to himFadiel Adams
Ramsamy is one of the two IDAC officials whose recorded voice notes, played on Day 148, disputed the authenticity of the supplementary 'A1' statement attributed to Adams and filed by chief investigator Dylan Perumal. Adams has since publicly called on her to release an almost two-hour recording she holds of him. Untested; both presumed innocent.
View profile →In the room & on the record
Counsel, the panel and sources
Evidence led by
- Advocate Segeels-Ncube
On the panel
- Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)
Sources
- Daily Maverick - Mchunu violated protocol to share confidential report with IDAC, inquiry hears (11 Aug 2026) ↗
- Sowetan - Mchunu bypassed protocol to deliver IGI report to Idac, Ramsamy tells Madlanga (11 Aug 2026) ↗
- TimesLIVE - Mchunu 'bypassed protocol' to deliver IGI report on crime intelligence officers to Idac (12 Aug 2026) ↗
- IOL - Ramsamy exposes route of IGI report to IDAC allegedly by Mchunu (12 Aug 2026) ↗
- BusinessDay - Parliament disputes Fadiel Adams' 'frozen laptop' claim at Madlanga inquiry (11 Aug 2026) ↗