Hearing record

Day 157

12 August 2026

The commission leaves IDAC and goes to KwaZulu-Natal: IPID's provincial investigations chief takes the panel through 149 deaths at the hands of police task teams, a colonel on R26,000 a month allegedly paid millions, and tow trucks moving drugs.

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Len Barnabas John - Day 157 of the Madlanga Commission

The day in brief

What you need to know

After a month on the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, the commission opened a new phase: alleged police hit squads in KwaZulu-Natal operating under the cover of task teams.
The witness was Len Barnabas John, deputy director for investigations at the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in KwaZulu-Natal.
IPID examined 149 deaths at the hands of SAPS task teams between April 2023 and 31 May 2026; John's evidence zoned in on 77 of those cases.
He told the commission police did not always act in self-defence, citing scenes where six people were shot dead and only two firearms were recovered.
Three units were investigated, focused on illicit drugs, cash-in-transit robberies and taxi-industry crime, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender and Captain Pedro Rodrigues.
Task team members generally said they acted on Crime Intelligence information, which John said was often not verified against dockets, other investigations or the responsible detectives.
John alleged Govender, whose SAPS take-home pay was under R26,000 a month, received more than R2.5 million from a tow-truck company owner between August 2022 and December 2023, and more than R2.7 million connected to the killing of alleged drug figure Bevan Loftus.
He testified that the KwaZulu-Natal tow-truck industry is heavily entangled with the drug trade, and that police helping tow operators find clients left the industry open to organised crime.
The commission stressed it is not itself investigating extrajudicial killings; the evidence goes to criminal infiltration of the police.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

A new phase, and why it is not a change of subject

For a month the Madlanga Commission has been inside one building: the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, its former head, its investigators, its prosecutors and its paperwork. Day 157 moved to a different province and a different institution, and it can look like a change of subject. It is not. The inquiry's terms of reference ask whether criminal syndicates have infiltrated the police, the prosecution and the intelligence services. The IDAC evidence went to the prosecution side of that question. This goes to the police side, and to the original complaint that started the whole inquiry: Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's allegations about KwaZulu-Natal. Commission spokesperson Jeremy Michaels framed the new evidence as being about squads that allegedly 'target suspects in cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies, as well as taxi operators and drug syndicates under the guise of a Task Team'.

149 deaths, and what the scenes did not support

John's evidence rested on an IPID body of work rather than a single case: 149 deaths caused by SAPS task teams in KwaZulu-Natal between April 2023 and 31 May 2026, from which he selected 77 cases for the commission. His central finding was that the standard account - that officers were fired upon and returned fire - was not consistently borne out by the scenes. 'We have identified through our investigation that in these killings you will get a shooting where six people are shot and killed,' he told the commission. 'When you do an investigation, you find only two firearms.' In some cases the deceased were unarmed; in some there was no case number against the person's name; in some the officers could not identify the person they had shot. Where syndicates had occupied hijacked houses, residents were killed alongside them. His conclusion was the sentence the day will be remembered by: 'they go out to kill the person, that is why we indicate extrajudicial.'

The intelligence that was never checked

The mechanism John described is the part that connects this evidence back to the rest of the inquiry. Task team members, he said, generally accounted for an operation by saying that Crime Intelligence had supplied information about where a cash-in-transit suspect could be found. That information was often not independently verified - not against the case dockets, not against other live investigations, and not with the detectives responsible for those cases. An unverified intelligence tip-off that leads to a fatal operation is, on this account, the point at which a policing function becomes capable of being used by whoever supplies the tip. That is precisely the vulnerability the commission was established to examine, and it is the same Crime Intelligence division whose leadership the last month of IDAC evidence has been about.

The money

The most concrete allegations of the day attached to one officer. John told the commission that Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender, who headed the KwaZulu-Natal cash-in-transit task team and whose SAPS take-home pay was under R26,000 a month, received a series of suspicious cash payments from the owner of a tow-truck company between August 2022 and December 2023 totalling more than R2.5 million, and that he was paid more than R2.7 million in connection with the killing of alleged drug figure Bevan Loftus. These are allegations placed before a commission of inquiry by an investigator. They have not been tested, no court has considered them, and Govender is presumed innocent and entitled to answer them.

Tow trucks, drugs and the industry in between

The last strand of John's evidence explained why a tow-truck operator would be in the picture at all. He told the commission the tow-truck industry in KwaZulu-Natal is deeply involved in the drug trade: 'we believe that tow trucks are used for transporting drugs. I'm not saying all the trucks, but in many of these cases, the tow truck and drug industries go together.' The link to policing is mundane and, on his evidence, corrosive: officers at accident scenes were helping particular tow operators get to clients first, which gave those operators a reason to keep officers close and made the industry a useful vehicle for organised crime. It is the same shape the commission has heard elsewhere in this inquiry - a lawful commercial relationship that becomes the channel for an unlawful one.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“We have identified through our investigation that in these killings you will get a shooting where six people are shot and killed. When you do an investigation, you find only two firearms.”

John on what the scenes showed. Len Barnabas John, IPID deputy director for investigations in KwaZulu-Natal, to the Madlanga Commission on 12 August 2026, on IPID's examination of 149 deaths caused by SAPS task teams. Untested; the officers concerned are presumed innocent.

“They go out to kill the person; that is why we indicate extrajudicial.”

John on why IPID calls them extrajudicial. Len Barnabas John to the Madlanga Commission on 12 August 2026. The commission has made no finding on any of these deaths and has stressed it is not itself investigating extrajudicial killings.

“We believe that tow trucks are used for transporting drugs. I'm not saying all the trucks, but in many of these cases, the tow truck and drug industries go together.”

John on tow trucks and the drug trade. Len Barnabas John to the Madlanga Commission on 12 August 2026, on why the tow-truck industry keeps appearing in KwaZulu-Natal drug investigations. Untested.

Our analysis

The bottom line

The commission spent four weeks establishing that the case against Crime Intelligence's leadership was, on the evidence of the directorate's own staff, badly built. Day 157 begins the other half of the inquiry's original question: not whether the wrong people were charged, but whether the right people were killed without ever being charged at all.

The number is what gives this day its weight. 149 deaths in three years at the hands of task teams in one province is not an anecdote, and IPID is not an outside critic - it is the statutory body whose job is exactly this. The specific pattern John described, six dead and two firearms recovered, is the kind of evidence that is difficult to explain as a series of individual misjudgements.

The connective tissue back to the rest of the archive is the unverified Crime Intelligence tip-off. If a task team can be sent to a location on intelligence nobody checks, then whoever controls the intelligence controls who gets shot. That is the infiltration hypothesis the commission was created to test, stated in its most direct form.

The counterweight belongs on the record. Lieutenant-Colonel Govender has not given evidence and has answered none of this; the allegation that he was paid to kill is the single most serious allegation made against any individual police officer in this inquiry, and it is untested. The commission has made no finding. This entry was written while the day was still running and will be extended once the full day is on the record.

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

Len Barnabas John

Deputy director for investigations, Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), KwaZulu-Natal

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Follow the threads

Who Len Barnabas John connects to

The officer at the centre of his evidence

Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender

John told the commission that the majority of the shootings of alleged cash-in-transit suspects involved a task team under Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender, and alleged payments to him of more than R2.5 million from a tow-truck company owner and more than R2.7 million connected to the killing of Bevan Loftus. Govender has not testified and has answered none of it; untested, presumed innocent.

View profile →Evidence returns to the province his allegations concerned

Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi

The commission exists because of Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's July 2025 allegations about criminal infiltration of policing in KwaZulu-Natal. John's Day 157 evidence is the first sustained IPID account of what task teams in that province have been doing. No finding either way.

View profile →The killing his evidence quantified

Bevan Loftus

John alleged a payment of more than R2.7 million connected to the killing of Bevan Loftus; the following day the commission heard from the deceased's family and from a firearms expert who attended the scene. Untested.

View profile →Took the same case from statistics to a family

Gregory Loftus

John's Day 157 evidence set out the pattern across 149 deaths; Gregory Loftus gave the commission the account of one of them on Day 158.

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In the room & on the record

Counsel, the panel and sources

On the panel

Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)

Sources

← Earlier in timeDay 15611 August 2026 More recent →Day 15813 August 2026