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Madlanga Commission hearing record

Day 175 of the Madlanga Commission

Witness: Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale

One year after its first witness, the chair said the evidence so far points to serious criminality inside the criminal justice system. Then the commission went into the prisons, where the head of Correctional Services described gangs that groom officials, plan escapes and reach witnesses, and an inmate who says officers told him to run or be killed.

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The day in brief

What you need to know

  • Day 175 fell exactly one year after the commission's first public hearing. Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi took the stand as its first witness on 17 September 2025.
  • Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga opened with a statement the commission published the same morning. He said the commission is yet to assess all the evidence and make definitive determinations in its final report, but that 'what is emerging from the evidence is that there are indications of serious criminality within the criminal justice system'.
  • His sharpest line, per the published statement and TimesLIVE: the apparent criminality 'suggests that for some time now, our criminal justice system has been populated by malleable, corrupt state functionaries'. It is an observation about trends, and he framed it as one. It is not a finding against any individual.
  • The commission's spokesperson Jeremy Michaels reported 110 witnesses over 174 days of hearings to 16 September 2026, 26,352 pages of oral testimony transcripts, and 105,282 pages of documentary evidence in 750 bundles.
  • The day's witness was Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, National Commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services. The commission's terms of reference name the department among the institutions it must examine for infiltration by criminal syndicates.
  • He described the Number gangs, the 26s, 27s and 28s, whose origins he traced back more than a century to mining communities, per IOL and EWN. Per IOL, the 26s concentrate on money through smuggling, drug dealing and gambling, the 27s are associated with violence, and the 28s divide into a gold line that fights and a silver line that supports.
  • His framing, per IOL: 'While incarceration removes offenders from society and seeks to protect the public, it does not automatically extinguish criminal intent or criminal associations or criminal activity for that matter.' Per eNCA he said correctional centres become 'strategic nodes within broader organised crime networks rather than isolated institutions'.
  • He said some gang structures include members whose role is to eliminate witnesses, per IOL and MDNtv, and per EWN that a gang known as the 'air force' specialises in escapes.
  • On how an official is turned, per EWN: 'The process typically begins with minor requests and favors, for example, sharing a cigarette, and escalates to personal conversations designed to establish familiarity.' EWN reported that where bribery fails, inmates turn to extortion.
  • The case he brought was Edward Khomotso Madiba, who escaped from Rooigrond Maximum Correctional Centre near Mahikeng on 6 September 2026 and was recaptured three days later in Brits. Eight correctional officials have been suspended, per The Citizen and TimesLIVE.
  • Thobakgale relayed what Madiba told him: that as the inmate began naming officers in court proceedings over an earlier escape in 2022, officers approached him and said, per TimesLIVE, 'it's either you leave or we are going to kill you'. That is an inmate's account, relayed by the commissioner. It is untested, no officer has been named, and the suspended officials are presumed innocent.
  • He also told the commission that Thabo Bester, the convicted murderer and rapist who escaped from Mangaung prison in 2022, 'has tried a number of times to get my attention alone', per Briefly and The Citizen, and that he always referred him to the department's complaints and requests processes.
  • Justice Madlanga drew the inference aloud, per The Citizen: 'Inmates that wield a lot of influence [and] have lots of money could target even the national commissioner.'
  • Maj-Gen Feroz Khan's written response is due on 18 September and his evidence is set down for 28 September 2026. Public evidence closes on 2 October and the report to the President is due on 16 November 2026.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

A year to the day

The commission began its first public hearing on 17 September 2025 with Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who put under oath the allegations of political interference and criminal infiltration he had made at a media briefing on 6 July 2025. Justice Madlanga marked the anniversary by departing from routine before the day's evidence began. His statement, published by the commission, recalled that he had said at the outset that if the allegations proved true it would 'spell doom' for the criminal justice system, and then asked whether a year of evidence had proved them false or was proving them true. He was careful about what he could say: the commission has not yet assessed all the evidence and will make its definitive determinations in the final report. With that caveat stated, he said that 'what is emerging from the evidence is that there are indications of serious criminality within the criminal justice system', that this is the result of infiltration and undue influence, and that criminal charges, dismissals and disciplinary charges against players in the system lend credence to those indications. His line on the cost, per the statement and TimesLIVE, was that the apparent criminality suggests that 'for some time now, our criminal justice system has been populated by malleable, corrupt state functionaries', and he asked rhetorically how many criminals had escaped charges over the years as a result. None of this is a finding against any named person, and he did not present it as one.

What the commission says it has done

A separate statement from spokesperson Jeremy Michaels set out the record in numbers. To 16 September 2026 the commission heard 110 witnesses over 174 days: 36 SAPS officers, 25 Hawks officers, four JMPD officers, eight EMPD officers and City of Ekurhuleni staff, six TMPD officers and City of Tshwane staff, two Gauteng Traffic Department officers, seven IDAC and NPA officials, five IPID officials, two Members of Parliament, one Cabinet Minister, eleven private individuals, and three experts called to help it frame recommendations on institutional reform. The hearings produced 26,352 pages of oral testimony transcripts, with a further 105,282 pages of documentary evidence in 750 bundles. The hotline received 1,894 calls, 78% of them outside the terms of reference, and 4,548 emails, 72% out of scope. About twenty-two in-camera applications were considered and nineteen granted, one of which was later revoked so that the witness testified openly; eight hearings ran fully in camera and eleven partially. The commission has been party to three High Court applications: Suleiman Carrim's was dismissed, and those brought by Maj-Gen Feroz Khan and Sergeant Fannie Nkosi were withdrawn. One recusal application against an evidence leader was dismissed. The statement also asked South Africans to remember Marius van der Merwe, who testified as Witness D and was assassinated in front of his family on 5 December 2025.

Why the prisons

The terms of reference list the Department of Correctional Services alongside the SAPS, the metro police departments, the NPA, the State Security Agency and the judiciary as institutions the commission must examine for infiltration. Prisons have been at the edge of this record for a year. EWN's anniversary account recalled Mkhwanazi's evidence that Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala 'was found with a cell phone inside prison, inside the correctional facilities', and in August the department publicly rejected Matlala's legal team's complaint that consulting him at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre had been obstructed. Thursday was the first day the head of the department sat in the witness chair and described the problem from the inside.

Gangs with a hierarchy and a reach

Thobakgale began with structure. Per IOL and EWN, he described the Number gangs, the 26s, 27s and 28s, whose origins he traced back more than a century to mining communities, operating through rigid hierarchies, rituals, codes and internal discipline. Per IOL, the 26s concentrate on money through smuggling, drug dealing and gambling; the 27s are associated with violence and act between the other two; the 28s divide into a gold line responsible for fighting and a silver line that performs support functions. Per eNCA, he said many offenders arrive already connected to street gangs, naming among them the Americans, the Hard Livings, the Young Dixie Boys, the Clever Kids and the Naughty Boys, and keep those allegiances while forming ties with the Number gangs, which creates channels of communication and command between people inside and gang leadership outside. His conclusion, per eNCA, was that correctional centres 'become strategic nodes within broader organised crime networks rather than isolated institutions', and per IOL that prisons have become places where gangs recruit and prepare future leaders of the criminal underworld. He said some gang structures include members whose role is to eliminate witnesses, per IOL and MDNtv, which is the point at which prison crime becomes this commission's business: a witness who can be reached is a case that can be lost.

How an official is turned

The part of the evidence that bears most directly on the commission's mandate was about officials, not inmates. Per EWN, Thobakgale described grooming as incremental: 'The process typically begins with minor requests and favors, for example, sharing a cigarette, and escalates to personal conversations designed to establish familiarity.' EWN reported that the gangs infiltrate the department through bribery, and that where bribery does not work they turn to extortion. Per EWN a gang known as the 'air force' specialises in escape plots. SABC News reported the same thread under the headline that officials can be manipulated by inmates. None of this named an official, and it was presented as the department's own account of its vulnerabilities.

Rooigrond: the escape he says was ordered

Thobakgale's worked example was recent. Edward Khomotso Madiba, serving 20 years for robbery with aggravating circumstances, unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, kidnapping and a parole violation, escaped from Rooigrond Maximum Correctional Centre near Mahikeng on 6 September 2026 and was rearrested three days later at a flat in Brits, per The Citizen, TimesLIVE and IOL. It was his second escape; the first was in 2022. Eight correctional officials have been suspended. Per TimesLIVE, Thobakgale interviewed Madiba with his head of security 'because of the information that he wanted to provide to me and how he was assisted by officers to escape and not only with this escape'. What Madiba told him, per TimesLIVE, was that he had been going through court processes over the 2022 escape and was starting to name officers, 'and that is when they approached him to say, 'Hey, it's either you leave or we are going to kill you''. Per The Citizen, Thobakgale added that this was how, on the inmate's account, they assisted him to escape, 'so that they break that line of him mentioning their names during court proceedings'. TimesLIVE reported his evidence that officers wrote a misleading incident report. His systemic point, per EWN: 'The weakness of the system is that we focus on recapturing them. We don't focus on the reason for the escape.' Every element of the threat is an escaped inmate's account relayed by the national commissioner. It has not been tested, no officer has been publicly named, and the suspended officials are presumed innocent. Madiba is now held at Kgosi Mampuru II in Pretoria, per IOL.

Thabo Bester and the meeting that did not happen

Thobakgale also used a name every South African knows. Per Briefly, he told the commission: 'I can give an example of inmate Thabo Bester, who has tried a number of times to get my attention alone.' Bester is the convicted murderer and rapist who escaped from Mangaung prison in 2022 by faking his death. Thobakgale said he did not agree to private engagements and, per The Citizen, 'I've always referred him to their complaints and requests processes', adding per Briefly that he always did so with his head of security. Justice Madlanga drew the inference, per The Citizen: 'Inmates that wield a lot of influence [and] have lots of money could target even the national commissioner', and, he went on, 'if I influence the national commissioner, maybe there is a way in which they, that is, the national commissioner, could influence some at the level of correctional centres not to do what they should do'. There is no allegation that any such influence succeeded. The point of the evidence was the attempt, and the procedure Thobakgale says defeated it.

Where the calendar stands

Maj-Gen Feroz Khan's outstanding written response is due on 18 September 2026 and his evidence is set down for 28 September. Joe 'Ferrari' Sibanyoni is due back for cross-examination on 21 September. General Fannie Masemola's formal withdrawal of charges is set for the Pretoria Regional Court on 29 September, and his suspension is a separate decision still with the President. Public evidence closes on 2 October 2026 and the report to the President is due on 16 November 2026.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“Unfortunately, what is emerging from the evidence is that there are indications of serious criminality within the criminal justice system and that this is the result of the infiltration of, and undue influence on, the criminal justice system by elements of criminality.”
The trend, a year in. Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, chairperson, opening Day 175, 17 September 2026, in a statement published by the commission and reported by TimesLIVE. He prefaced it by saying definitive determinations await the final report.
“What is painful, though, is that this apparent criminality suggests that for some time now, our criminal justice system has been populated by malleable, corrupt state functionaries.”
What it says about the system. Justice Madlanga, same statement, per the commission's published text and TimesLIVE. An observation about trends in the evidence, not a finding against any person.
“While incarceration removes offenders from society and seeks to protect the public, it does not automatically extinguish criminal intent or criminal associations or criminal activity for that matter.”
Prison does not end the crime. National Commissioner of Correctional Services Makgothi Thobakgale, Day 175, per IOL.
“The process typically begins with minor requests and favors, for example, sharing a cigarette, and escalates to personal conversations designed to establish familiarity.”
It starts with a cigarette. Thobakgale, per EWN, on how inmates groom correctional officials.
“He was going through court processes for the escape of 2022, and he was starting to mention the names of officers and that is when they approached him to say, 'Hey, it's either you leave or we are going to kill you'.”
Run, or be killed. Thobakgale, per TimesLIVE, relaying what escaped inmate Edward Madiba told him about why he left Rooigrond in September 2026. An inmate's untested account; no officer has been named and the suspended officials are presumed innocent.
“The weakness of the system is that we focus on recapturing them. We don't focus on the reason for the escape.”
Chasing the wrong thing. Thobakgale, per EWN, on how the department responds to escapes.
“I can give an example of inmate Thabo Bester, who has tried a number of times to get my attention alone.”
Bester wanted him alone. Thobakgale, per Briefly, on approaches from convicted murderer Thabo Bester. He said he referred Bester to the formal complaints and requests process each time.
“Inmates that wield a lot of influence [and] have lots of money could target even the national commissioner.”
The chair's inference. Justice Madlanga, per The Citizen, responding to the Bester evidence.

Our analysis

The bottom line

The anniversary statement is the most significant thing the chair has said in public, and it should be read exactly as carefully as he wrote it. He did not say Mkhwanazi's allegations are proved. He said there are indications of serious criminality, that they flow from infiltration, and that the charges, dismissals and disciplinary processes already under way lend them credence. That is a statement about a direction of travel, with the final determinations expressly reserved. It matters because it tells every implicated person still to answer, Khan first among them, where the evidence currently sits in the chair's mind, and it matters equally that he stopped short of anything that could be called a pre-judgement.

The spokesperson's numbers are worth more than a birthday card. Seventy-eight percent of hotline calls and seventy-two percent of emails were outside the terms of reference, which says the public has been bringing the commission everything that is wrong with policing and not only what it was asked to examine. And the witness list is heavily weighted: 61 of 110 witnesses came from the SAPS and the Hawks, against four from the JMPD, and the published categories have no line at all for Correctional Services. The terms of reference also name the State Security Agency and the judiciary. With public evidence closing on 2 October, how much of the mandate beyond the police can still be reached in the fortnight that remains is a fair question.

Thobakgale's evidence is a different kind of evidence from most of this record. He was not accused of anything and did not accuse any named official. He came as the head of an institution describing its own weakness, which is useful and also self-interested: a national commissioner who explains how officials are groomed, and how he personally turned Bester away, is also establishing that the head of the department is not the problem. The Rooigrond account is the part that can be tested, because it is specific. There is an escape on a known date, eight suspended officials, an incident report he says was misleading, and an inmate who says he was threatened. If the commission wants to know whether its terms of reference reach inside the prisons, that is the file to pull.

His line that the department focuses on recapture rather than on why an inmate escaped is the kind of admission a report can build on, and it echoes what Laura Pop told the commission the day before about institutions whose own disciplinary machinery can be captured. An escape investigated by the region it happened in is the prisons' version of the internal affairs unit that cannot refer a case outward. On 8 September, per SABC News, Thobakgale said he had taken the Rooigrond investigation away from the region and put it under his own office. Whether that holds, and what it finds, is the next thing to watch.

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

Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale

National Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services

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Follow the threads

Who Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale connects to

Held in his department's custody

Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala

Matlala is held at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre in Pretoria. In August 2026 the department rejected his legal team's complaint that consultations there had been obstructed, and on the commission's first anniversary EWN recalled Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's evidence that Matlala had been found with a cellphone inside a correctional facility. Thobakgale did not give evidence about Matlala on Day 175. Matlala has pleaded not guilty in his criminal trial and is presumed innocent.

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In the room & on the record

Counsel, the panel and sources

On the panel

  • Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)

Sources

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