Hearing record

Day 158

13 August 2026

Evidence led by Advocate Sikhakhane SC

A father who is himself a former policeman tells the commission he went to court on 31 March 2023 to stop the police killing his son. They killed him the next day.

Official record ↗All hearing days

Awaiting portrait

The day in brief

What you need to know

The KwaZulu-Natal stream moved from IPID's statistics to a single killing: that of Durban tow-truck operator Bevan Loftus on 1 April 2023.
The first witness was his father Gregory Loftus, himself a former police officer, led by evidence leader Advocate Sikhakhane SC.
On 31 March 2023, the day before the shooting, Gregory Loftus deposed to an affidavit supporting an urgent interdict to stop Captain Deena Govender and the SAPS from killing his son.
'A day after the application was issued, Captain Deena Govender and a group of SAPS officers under his command murdered my son anyway.'
He alleged the killing was procured by Clive Naicker, a tow-truck competitor of his son and an alleged drug dealer.
Bevan Loftus and four other people died in what police described as a drug raid on a flat in Morningside, Durban; 27 rounds were fired.
Gregory Loftus rejected the drug-dealer account, said his son lived modestly off legitimate towing income, and called the narrative a cover-up built after the fact.
Retired SAPS captain Ashley Houston, a firearms expert, described Bevan Loftus as a notorious figure linked to the Hollywood gang - and then called the police version of the shooting 'highly improbable'.
Houston's forensic point: blood spatter and bullet strikes were low on the walls and on the floor, and the bodies lined up in the lounge did not fit the officers' shootout account.
Officers named in the operation include Captain Deena Govender, Captain Pedro Rodrigues, Constable Matthew Halford, Yogandram Megan Munsami, Michael Menzi Shabalala and Metro Police officer Jevon Lee China.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

From 149 deaths to one

Day 157 gave the commission a number: 149 people killed by SAPS task teams in KwaZulu-Natal between April 2023 and 31 May 2026, of which IPID's Len John had examined 77. Day 158 gave it a name. Bevan Loftus was a tow-truck operator and taxi owner in Durban, shot dead with four other people on 1 April 2023 in a flat in Morningside during what the police recorded as a drug raid. He is the case IPID's Len John had already told the commission about, alleging that the task team's commander, Captain Deena Govender, was paid more than R2.7 million in connection with the killing. On Day 158 the commission heard from the family and from the scene.

The affidavit and the day after

The single most arresting fact of the day is a date. On 31 March 2023 Gregory Loftus - a former police officer himself - deposed to an affidavit in support of an urgent interdict application seeking to restrain Captain Deena Govender and the SAPS from murdering his son. His son had been warned, had been in hiding, and the family had gone to court about it. The application was issued. 'A day after the application was issued,' he told the commission, 'Captain Deena Govender and a group of SAPS officers under his command murdered my son anyway.' Whatever a court eventually makes of the shooting itself, the sequence is documentary: a warning was placed on the record of the High Court, and the thing the warning described happened the next day.

Who Bevan Loftus was, and the fight over that question

The commission heard two irreconcilable accounts of the deceased. His father said he was not a drug dealer and was not in the business of killing people; that he lived modestly on the income of a legitimate towing business; and that the drug narrative was assembled afterwards to justify the shooting. He also described a pattern of police harassment that he said began in 2022, and told the commission that five of his son's drivers had been shot since 2020 - the tow-truck industry's own violence, which the commission has now heard about from several directions. Retired SAPS captain Ashley Houston told the commission the opposite: that Bevan Loftus was a notorious figure who had been seen associating with the local Hollywood gang. The commission is not required to resolve who Bevan Loftus was in order to answer its own question. Its terms of reference ask whether police were used by criminals to remove rivals. A police killing does not become lawful because the deceased was a criminal, and that distinction is what kept the day on the commission's mandate rather than on the deceased's reputation.

The forensics, from a police witness

The most damaging evidence of the day came from the witness least likely to be accused of sympathy for the deceased. Ashley Houston is a retired SAPS captain and a firearms expert who attended the scene, and it was he who called the officers' account 'highly improbable'. The task team's version was that they found a door ajar, that men jumped up from a couch and that a shootout followed, in the course of which 27 rounds were fired and five people were killed. Houston's evidence was that the physical scene did not support it: 'most blood spatters were low on the wall and mostly on the floor', a distribution that does not fit men shot while standing and returning fire, and the bodies lined up in the lounge did not match the wound trajectories he would expect from rifle fire in a flat that small. That is not a family's grief or a lawyer's argument. It is a police firearms expert saying the physical evidence and the police version do not correspond.

The alleged commissioning of it

Gregory Loftus's allegation is that the killing was bought. He named Clive Naicker, a competitor of his son in the tow-truck industry and an alleged drug dealer, as the person at whose instance the police acted. Set alongside Day 157 - where IPID alleged that Govender, on a SAPS take-home salary of 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 this killing - the commission now has the whole shape of the allegation in front of it: a commercial rivalry, a payment, a police operation, a death, and a drug narrative to close the file. Every element of it is untested. Naicker has not answered it before this commission, Govender has not testified, and the officers named have given no evidence in reply. All are presumed innocent.

The officers named

For the record, and because the commission's work will turn on who was there: the officers named in connection with the operation are Captain Deena Govender, who commanded the task team, Captain Pedro Rodrigues, Constable Matthew Halford, Yogandram Megan Munsami, Michael Menzi Shabalala, and Metro Police officer Jevon Lee China. Naming them is not an accusation of guilt by this archive. They have not been charged before this inquiry, they have not given their account to it, and each of them is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to answer what has been said.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“A day after the application was issued, Captain Deena Govender and a group of SAPS officers under his command murdered my son anyway.”

Gregory Loftus on the interdict. Gregory Loftus, former police officer and father of Bevan Loftus, to the Madlanga Commission on 13 August 2026, on the urgent interdict application he deposed to on 31 March 2023. Untested; the officers named are presumed innocent.

“Bevan was murdered by the police under the guise of a legitimate police operation and at the instance of Clive Naiker, a competitor of Bevan in the tow truck industry and alleged drug dealer.”

Gregory Loftus on why he says it happened. Gregory Loftus to the Madlanga Commission, 13 August 2026. Clive Naicker has not answered this before the commission and is presumed innocent.

“Most blood spatters were low on the wall and mostly on the floor.”

Houston on the scene. Retired SAPS captain Ashley Houston, a firearms expert who attended the Morningside scene, to the Madlanga Commission on 13 August 2026, on the task team's account that they were fired upon and returned fire.

Our analysis

The bottom line

The commission needed this day. Day 157's evidence was statistical and institutional, and statistics let a reader keep a comfortable distance. A father who went to court to stop his son being killed, and buried him the following week, removes that distance without the commission having to make a single finding.

The evidentiary weight, though, sits with Houston rather than with the family. A retired police captain and firearms expert who describes the deceased as a notorious gang associate, and who then tells the commission the officers' account of the shooting is 'highly improbable' on the physical evidence, is close to the ideal witness for this inquiry: he has no reason to flatter either side, and his conclusion cuts against the people he used to serve with.

The pattern is now consistent across two days. Day 157: unverified intelligence, unarmed dead, firearms that do not match the number of bodies. Day 158: a scene whose blood spatter is on the floor and a version that says everyone was standing. Each on its own is arguable. Together they describe a method.

What is still entirely missing is the other side. Govender has not testified. Rodrigues has not testified. None of the officers named has given the commission their account of the Morningside operation, and the commission has not made any finding about any of them. Until that evidence is heard, everything on this page is one half of a contested record - and with the evidence deadline set at 2 October, whether the commission gets that other half is now a real question.

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

Gregory Loftus

Former police officer; father of Bevan Loftus

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Ashley Houston

Retired captain, South African Police Service; firearms expert

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Follow the threads

Who Gregory Loftus connects to

His son

In the room & on the record

Counsel, the panel and sources

Evidence led by

Advocate Sikhakhane SC

On the panel

Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)

Sources

← Earlier in timeDay 15712 August 2026 More recent →Day 15914 August 2026

Day 158

What you need to know

The day, in depth

From 149 deaths to one

The affidavit and the day after

Who Bevan Loftus was, and the fight over that question

The forensics, from a police witness

The alleged commissioning of it

The officers named

Key moments from the record

The bottom line

Who testified this day

Gregory Loftus

Ashley Houston

Who Gregory Loftus connects to

Bevan Loftus

Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender

Clive Naicker

Ashley Houston

Len Barnabas John

Counsel, the panel and sources

Evidence led by

On the panel

Sources