Madlanga CommissionLatest day

Hearing record

Day 78

On day 78 the Commission continued hearing evidence from Sgt Fannie Nkosi, the Gauteng organised-crime detective testifying anonymously as "Witness F" about his alleged role as a go-between linking the "Big Five" cartel to police and political figures.

Official transcript (PDF) ↗All hearing days
Still from Day 78 of the Madlanga Commission

The day in brief

What you need to know

  • Day 78 was another sitting in Sgt Fannie Nkosi's marathon appearance before the Commission, as he continued testifying under the designation "Witness F" about his time in a Gauteng organised crime unit.
  • Nkosi has been described by evidence leaders and commissioners as an intermediary who allegedly passed information between organised crime figures and police officials.
  • WhatsApp messages extracted from his phone and put to him during his testimony were said to show contact with alleged "Big Five" cartel figure Katiso Molefe, including exchanges from around the time of the murder of Oupa "DJ Sumbody" Sefoka.
  • Commissioners repeatedly challenged Nkosi over answers in which he said he could not recall events, at points describing him as an evasive and unhelpful witness.
  • His testimony over this stretch of hearings also touched on concerns raised about the conduct of a City of Tshwane official.
  • None of the individuals named through Nkosi's testimony have been convicted of any crime arising from the Commission's evidence, and all allegations remain unproven claims that the Commission itself does not adjudicate.
  • Nkosi's own conduct came under separate legal scrutiny weeks later, when he was arrested and charged with theft and unlawful possession of ammunition, reportedly found in possession of several closed cash-in-transit case dockets.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

A go-between under oath

Nkosi's testimony has cast him as a conduit connecting alleged organised crime figures to police officers and, through messages put to him, to more senior figures. Reporting from this period says he was pressed on WhatsApp exchanges linking him to alleged cartel figure Katiso Molefe. The Commission examined whether those contacts extended to information about active police investigations.

An "obstructive" witness

Commissioners, including chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, voiced frustration at Nkosi's repeated claims of memory lapses and his reluctance to answer directly. He was characterised in commentary around the hearings as an uncooperative witness whose evidence needed to be tested against documentary material, including phone records, rather than taken at face value.

The DJ Sumbody thread

Part of the scrutiny of Nkosi's messages centred on the period around the killing of music producer Oupa "DJ Sumbody" Sefoka, with questions about what Nkosi knew or communicated at the time. The Commission has not made any finding on the murder itself; the exchanges were presented as material for the record, to be weighed alongside other evidence in the broader cartel-infiltration strand of the inquiry.

Consequences after the stand

Weeks after this stretch of testimony, Nkosi was himself arrested and appeared in court on theft and unlawful ammunition possession charges, with reports that he was found holding several closed cash-in-transit case dockets. South African law and the Commission's own terms of reference mean evidence given before Madlanga cannot be used directly against a witness in a later criminal trial, a protection Nkosi was reminded of during his appearance.

Our analysis

The bottom line

Nkosi's position in this narrative is unusual: he is simultaneously a serving police officer testifying about organised crime infiltration of SAPS, and a witness whose own conduct, going by his later arrest, became the subject of a separate criminal process. That dual status is exactly the kind of case a commission of inquiry is built to surface, someone close enough to an alleged corrupt network to describe its mechanics, but with an obvious incentive to minimise his own exposure. His repeated inability to recall detail, if the commissioners' criticism is accurate, does not by itself prove dishonesty, but it does mean his evidence has to be weighed against the documentary trail, phone extractions, dockets, timelines, rather than accepted at face value.

The WhatsApp material linking Nkosi to an alleged "Big Five" figure around the time of a high-profile killing matters less as proof of any specific crime than as an illustration of how informal, low-cost channels, a phone, a message thread, can be the connective tissue the Commission is trying to map between organised crime and the police service meant to investigate it. None of this establishes that Nkosi, Molefe, or anyone else named in his testimony committed an offence; it establishes that the contacts existed and are now part of a public record for the Commission, prosecutors, and eventually courts to assess.

The subsequent charges against Nkosi are a useful reminder of the limits of the Commission's protections: testimony given at Madlanga cannot be used against a witness in a later criminal trial, but that immunity does not extend to independent evidence gathered by police, such as items found in a search. Two separate accountability tracks are running in parallel, the inquiry's fact-finding aimed at systemic recommendations, and ordinary criminal process aimed at individual guilt or innocence, and it will be for the courts, not the Commission, to determine whether Nkosi or anyone he implicated is criminally liable.

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 7713 March 2026More recent →Day 7917 March 2026