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Day 58

IPID's acting national head of investigations, Thuso Keefelakae, opened a run of watchdog testimony by telling the commission that legal gaps, thin forensic capacity and chronic under-resourcing were crippling its ability to investigate rogue police and metro officers, while alleging deep collusion between the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department and SAPS.

Official transcript (PDF) ↗All hearing days
Still from Day 58 of the Madlanga Commission

The day in brief

What you need to know

  • Thuso Keefelakae, IPID's acting national head of investigations, testified on Day 58 (Wednesday, 11 February 2026).
  • He described the structural constraints - legal gaps, limited forensic capacity and resource shortages - that he said undermine IPID's mandate to hold police and municipal police to account.
  • Keefelakae alleged collusion between the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department (EMPD) and SAPS across drug trafficking, taxi violence and vehicle hijackings, framing organised crime as an entrenched business model.
  • He testified that IPID handed a report to the City of Ekurhuleni in 2023, but that the implicated EMPD figure named Mkhwanazi was, on his account, never disciplined.
  • IPID urged the commission to probe Ekurhuleni's alleged failure to act on the watchdog's findings.
  • All individuals named remain presumed innocent; the allegations are IPID's evidence before the commission and have not been tested in a court.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

A watchdog that says it cannot bite

Keefelakae's evidence centred on capacity: he told the commission that IPID lacks the forensic reach and staffing to match the scale of police-linked crime it is asked to investigate, and that legal gaps leave metro police only partly within its net. He cast these constraints as the reason serious cases stall.

Ekurhuleni in the frame

According to Keefelakae, EMPD officers and SAPS members colluded in drug trafficking, taxi violence and vehicle hijackings in the East Rand. He said IPID's 2023 report to the City of Ekurhuleni prompted no disciplinary action against the EMPD figure it implicated, and IPID asked the commission to examine that inaction.

Our analysis

The bottom line

Day 58 shifted the commission's lens from the accused to the investigators, and the picture Keefelakae painted was of a watchdog structurally set up to fail. If his account holds, the bottleneck is not a shortage of allegations but the absence of forensic and legal tools to convert them into prosecutable cases - a systemic point that could shape any recommendations the commission ultimately makes about IPID's powers and funding.

The Ekurhuleni thread is significant because it moves the corruption narrative beyond individual bad actors toward an alleged institutional pattern, with a 2023 report that Keefelakae says went unactioned. That claim is his testimony, not a court finding, and the EMPD figure he named is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But it sets up a live question for later witnesses: what happens to credible watchdog findings once they land on a municipality's desk.

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

On the panel

  • Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga (chairperson)

Sources

← Earlier in timeDay 5710 February 2026More recent →Day 5912 February 2026