Madlanga Commission hearing record

Day 178 of the Madlanga Commission

23 September 2026

Evidence led by Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC

The commission sat to hear a man who was not there. Three grounds were put up to keep him out of the box - a blood-pressure certificate, a period of spiritual seclusion, and an overnight dash to the High Court to stop his own WhatsApp messages being read aloud.

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Still from Day 178 of the Madlanga Commission

The day in brief

What you need to know

Nothing on this page is a finding. A postponement application is a scheduling dispute; it decides nothing about any allegation, and everyone named here is presumed innocent.
Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane, the KwaMhlanga taxi owner known in the industry as 'King of the Sky', was under subpoena to give evidence at 9:30am and did not appear. The commission sat anyway and spent the morning on whether it could go on without him.
Per Eyewitness News, SABC News, IOL and The Citizen, his counsel Advocate Thabani Masuku put up three grounds: a medical certificate, a period of spiritual seclusion, and a pending High Court application against the subpoena itself.
The medical ground was uncontrolled hypertension. Per Inside Politics the certificate anticipates that he will be able to return on 28 September, and per SABC News the chief evidence leader framed the fallback in the same terms, as what to do 'if he hasn't recovered by Monday'.
The second ground was a period of sacred spiritual seclusion, which per IOL was described to the panel as culturally significant and inseparable from his identity. Per The Citizen it was deliberately kept out of the founding affidavit so that it would not be picked over in public.
The third ground was an urgent application filed in the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday night. Per Eyewitness News and IOL it seeks two things: to set aside the subpoena compelling him to testify, and to stop the commission using WhatsApp messages taken off his phone. It is set down for 6 October 2026.
Per Eyewitness News the commission confirmed it had received the court papers, its spokesperson Jeremy Michaels saying it would respond within the relevant timelines, and that until a court says otherwise the subpoena stands.
The messages he is trying to keep out are the ones the commission put to Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni two days earlier, on Day 177: exchanges between the two men that the evidence leaders read as touching on izinkabi, and that Sibanyoni explained as ordinary taxi-industry security. See Day 177.
Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC did not fight the medical certificate. Per Inside Politics: 'I don't take issue with it. The medical certificate anticipates that Mr Sindane will be able to return on 28 September.'
He fought the rest. Per SABC News and IOL his case was that the court application had been sat on and that its urgency was therefore self-created, and that a pending court case is not on its own a reason to stop a commission from sitting.
His alternative was to use the day rather than lose it: per SABC News, to lead the documentary evidence in Sindane's absence so that it is on the record, with the question of what is finally admitted left open and Sindane's right to answer it preserved.
Masuku's answer went to what publication does. Per The Citizen he told the panel that if the material is put up while his client is in bed, he has no filter to balance its disclosure, and that the evidence can be heard later when he can give it his full attention.
Chaskalson put the calendar on the record. Per SABC News and IOL: 'Our programme is tight. It's not just that we can't give double the time to the witnesses who don't want to be here. We can't give 50% more time to those witnesses. We won't finish. And we do need to finish.'
Per SABC News the chairperson reserved his ruling to Friday 25 September 2026.
Per IOL, Sindane is the fourth person to have cited illness at this commission, after dismissed Major General Feroz Khan, Medicare24 chief executive Michael van Wyk and North West businessman Suliman Carrim. Being ill is not misconduct, and the commission has accepted medical grounds before; the pattern is a fact about the commission's calendar, not an allegation against any of them.
Public evidence closes on 2 October 2026 and the report to the President is due on 16 November 2026. A ruling on Friday, a possible return on Monday and a court date on 6 October all sit against a chamber with days left in it.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

The day the commission sat for an empty chair

The commission convened at the Bridgette Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria for what had been set down as the evidence of Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane, a KwaMhlanga taxi owner served with a Rule 10.6 notice in August 2026 alongside Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni. Per Eyewitness News the commission had expected him in the witness box at 9:30am; per SABC News his evidence was to cover financial records, the stokvel dealings the panel has been putting to Sibanyoni, payments he received from Sibanyoni and the text messages between the two men. None of that happened. What the day produced instead was a contested application about whether it should happen at all, and a ruling reserved to the end of the week.

Ground one: the certificate

Per Eyewitness News, Sindane's legal team submitted a medical certificate to the commission on Wednesday morning. Per IOL and SABC News the condition put up was uncontrolled hypertension; MDNtv also reports flu. Advocate Thabani Masuku's argument was not simply that his client was unwell but that he could not participate: per Eyewitness News and IOL, 'The issue is whether in his current condition he's able to follow, even if you were to flight his evidence, he's able to follow what is going on.' Per Inside Politics the certificate itself anticipates a return on 28 September, which is the Monday after this sitting, and per SABC News the chief evidence leader worked to the same date when he described what should happen 'if he hasn't recovered by Monday'. A medical certificate is not in dispute on this page and is not an allegation about anybody.

Ground two: the seclusion

The second ground was one this commission has not heard before. Per IOL, Masuku told the panel his client was concurrently undergoing a period of sacred spiritual seclusion, and framed it as culturally significant and inseparable from his identity rather than as a scheduling preference; per Inside Politics he put it as a matter of African personhood and wellbeing that people seeking spiritual enlightenment should not be coerced out of. Per The Citizen it was deliberately left out of the founding affidavit so that the practice would not be picked over in public. The archive records the ground as it was argued. Whether it is a good reason to move a subpoenaed witness is a question for the chairperson, and he has not yet answered it.

Ground three: the overnight dash to the High Court

On Tuesday night, hours before he was due in the box, Sindane filed an urgent application in the High Court in Pretoria. Per Eyewitness News and IOL it asks for two things: that the subpoena compelling his testimony be set aside, and that the commission be stopped from using WhatsApp messages taken off his phone, pending a review. Per News24 the same application is framed as a bid to keep the messages from being exposed at all. It is set down for 6 October 2026. Per Eyewitness News the commission confirmed receipt through its spokesperson Jeremy Michaels, who said it would respond within the relevant timelines, and made the position plain in the meantime: the subpoena still stands and it had not been set aside. That is why the commission sat at all on Wednesday.

What is actually in the messages, and why this is the second man to fight them

The phone evidence is not new to this record; it is the through-line between Days 177 and 178. Per Eyewitness News and IOL, the WhatsApp exchanges between Sindane and Sibanyoni came under scrutiny during Sibanyoni's own appearance on Monday 21 September, including messages the evidence leaders read as touching on izinkabi, a word that can mean contract killers. Sibanyoni's answer, per Business Day and the Mail and Guardian, was that in the taxi industry the word is used for the men who protect taxi bosses and ranks. Two days earlier Sibanyoni had himself objected to the commission using material taken off his own seized cellphone, calling it an abuse of his privacy and constitutional rights, and reserving the right to take it on urgent review. Sindane has now taken the step Sibanyoni reserved. Two co-accused, one body of phone evidence, two attempts to keep it out: that is the shape of this strand, and no court has yet ruled on either objection.

The commission's answer: use the day, do not lose it

Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC split the application. On the medical ground he conceded: per Inside Politics, 'I don't take issue with it. The medical certificate anticipates that Mr Sindane will be able to return on 28 September.' On the rest he opposed. Per SABC News and IOL he argued that the urgency of the court application was self-created, because it could have been brought earlier and was instead launched the night before the witness was due, and that a pending court case is not on its own a ground for a commission to stop. Per IOL he suggested the application risked being struck from the roll for want of urgency. His practical proposal, per SABC News, was to flight the documentary evidence in Sindane's absence so the record would carry it, with what is ultimately admitted left to be decided later: 'What we would want to do is to use today in his absence to flight the some of the documentary evidence so that we don't waste the day and so that if he hasn't recovered by Monday, there is evidence on record, which at a later stage might be capable of, will either be admitted or not.'

The objection to flighting: provisional is still public

Masuku's resistance to that proposal was the sharpest part of the morning, and it is an argument about what a public commission does to a person before he has answered. Per The Citizen, he told the panel that if the evidence is put up while his client lies in bed nursing himself, he has no filter to balance its disclosure, and that the evidence can be heard later when he is able to give the commission his full attention; per Inside Politics he put the principle directly, that publicly presenting private communications provisionally is still publication. Per IOL he pressed the reputational harm of flighting material the witness is not there to contextualise. Chaskalson's answer was the calendar, per SABC News and IOL: 'Our programme is tight. It's not just that we can't give double the time to the witnesses who don't want to be here. We can't give 50% more time to those witnesses. We won't finish. And we do need to finish.'

Where it was left

Per SABC News the chairperson, Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, reserved his ruling on the postponement to Friday 25 September 2026. Three dates now sit in front of this witness: the ruling on Friday, the 28 September return the medical certificate anticipates and around which the chief evidence leader framed his fallback, and the High Court hearing on 6 October. Public evidence in the chamber closes on 2 October. Nothing was decided on Wednesday about the Rule 10.6 notice, about the Delmas extortion and money laundering charges Sindane faces with Sibanyoni and two other men, or about what the messages mean. He has answered none of it, and until he does, or a court rules, it is all untested.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“The issue is whether in his current condition he's able to follow, even if you were to flight his evidence, he's able to follow what is going on.”

Masuku on whether an ill man can follow his own evidence. Advocate Thabani Masuku for Sindane, arguing against the commission leading documentary evidence in his client's absence, per Eyewitness News and IOL.

“I don't take issue with it. The medical certificate anticipates that Mr Sindane will be able to return on 28 September.”

Chaskalson concedes the certificate and names the return date. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC on the medical ground, per Inside Politics.

“What we would want to do is to use today in his absence to flight the some of the documentary evidence so that we don't waste the day and so that if he hasn't recovered by Monday, there is evidence on record, which at a later stage might be capable of, will either be admitted or not.”

Chaskalson on using the day rather than losing it. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC proposing that the documentary evidence be led in Sindane's absence, with admissibility left open, per SABC News.

“Our programme is tight. It's not just that we can't give double the time to the witnesses who don't want to be here. We can't give 50% more time to those witnesses. We won't finish. And we do need to finish.”

The calendar, put on the record. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC on why the commission cannot keep absorbing postponements, per SABC News and IOL. Public evidence closes on 2 October 2026.

Our analysis

The bottom line

A day about a diary is still a day about power. The question argued on Wednesday was narrow and procedural, but the thing underneath it is the oldest problem a commission of inquiry has: it can compel attendance, and it cannot compel a body to be well or a High Court roll to move. Every mechanism the commission holds was on display and every one of them has a lag. The subpoena stands, and it stood over an empty chair.

The two objections should be read together. On Day 177 Sibanyoni told this commission it should not be using material lifted from his cellphone when it was seized in a criminal investigation, and reserved the right to take that on urgent review. On Day 178 his co-accused did exactly that, in the High Court, the night before he was due to speak. It is the same body of phone evidence and the same constitutional argument, run by two men who share a criminal charge sheet. Whether that argument is good is a question for a judge on 6 October. What it has already achieved is delay, and delay is worth something when public evidence closes on 2 October.

Chaskalson's proposal is the interesting one, because it is the commission trying to buy back the day without taking anything away from the witness. Flighting documents provisionally, with admissibility reserved and the right of reply intact, is a way of making a calendar hold. Masuku's answer, that provisional publication is still publication, is not a technicality: the archive itself is evidence of how quickly material aired in that chamber travels. The chairperson now has to weigh a reputational harm that cannot be recalled against a report deadline that cannot be moved.

Three named people have been excused on medical grounds in the life of this commission before Wednesday, and there is nothing improper in any of it. But the effect is cumulative and the calendar does not forgive. With public evidence closing on 2 October, the practical question is no longer whether Sindane's grounds are good. It is whether, between a ruling on Friday, a possible return on Monday and a court date four days after the chamber closes, there is any week left in which he can be heard at all.

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