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Day 87

The commission's probe into corruption, political interference and organised crime in the criminal justice system turned to metro-police procurement, with suspended Tshwane Metro Police Department director Tshukudu Malatji testifying about an irregular ad hoc security-deployment arrangement that reportedly cost the City of Tshwane about R14 million.

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Still from Day 87 of the Madlanga Commission

The day in brief

What you need to know

  • Day 87 turned the commission's corruption, political-interference and organised-crime inquiry toward local-government procurement, focusing on the Tshwane Metro Police Department's security contracting.
  • The central allegation, aired in evidence and reported by Daily News, is that suspended TMPD asset-protection director Tshukudu Malatji failed to act on a written instruction to cancel ad hoc security deployments flagged as irregular, and that the City lost about R14 million as a result.
  • Justice Madlanga rejected Malatji's description of the failure as a mere oversight and told him to take full responsibility for the expenditure.
  • Much of the day turned on a security tender (reference 02-2016/2017) that had been cancelled in 2017 after bid documents went missing and was later revived and awarded in 2022 following legal challenges by bidders.
  • Malatji said he could not establish who had held the keys to the missing records, an account Madlanga said he found very strange and hard to accept.
  • All of this is untested evidence and questioning; Malatji is presumed innocent and has not been found by the commission or any court to have acted unlawfully.
  • The hearing showed the commission widening its lens from national policing and cartel allegations to how metro-level procurement can leak public money, a recurring theme across the inquiry.

Full coverage

The day, in depth

R14 million and a disregarded cancellation order

Daily News reported that Malatji, the TMPD's director for asset protection and security services, disregarded a written instruction from a superior to immediately terminate ad hoc security-deployment contracts that had been flagged as irregular, and that the City of Tshwane incurred roughly R14 million in irregular expenditure in early 2025 as a result. The commission's account, as reported, was that Malatji conceded he had not acted on the instruction because he objected to it. These are untested allegations aired in evidence; Malatji has not been convicted of any offence.

A tender cancelled over missing documents, then revived

The Citizen set out the disputed security tender's history: reference 02-2016/2017, initiated in 2016 to appoint private firms to guard municipal assets, with 22 companies shortlisted before it was cancelled in 2017 over missing bid documents, then revived and awarded in 2022 after bidders challenged the termination. Malatji told the commission he could not explain who had held the keys to the records that went missing. Madlanga said he found it strange that a senior official so closely involved in the process professed not to know why it had collapsed.

A 'fractured' TMPD and alleged tender manipulation

Weekend coverage framed the week's hearings as exposing a divided metro-police leadership and alleged manipulation of the procurement process. The Sunday Independent's wrap described a 'fractured' TMPD, while Sunday World reported that Madlanga openly struggled to accept Malatji's version of the controversial tender. That reporting reflects the evidence and the panel's questions, not any finding of wrongdoing.

Political reaction in Tshwane

IOL reported that the ANC's Greater Tshwane region welcomed the TMPD testimony before the commission, framing it as vindication of long-standing concerns about corruption in the metro. Such party-political statements are advocacy rather than evidence, and the commission's own findings on the TMPD procurement remain to be made.

In their words

Key moments from the record

“You failed. As a result, the municipality incurred a R14 million expense. I don't think you should come and sit there and say it's an oversight. You must take full responsibility.”
Madlanga tells Malatji to take full responsibility. Malatji had characterised his failure to halt the flagged ad hoc contracts as an oversight. The chairperson rejected that framing, according to Daily News.
“It simply does not make sense, Mr Malatji.”
'It simply does not make sense'. Pressing Malatji on his account of the 2016/17 tender that was cancelled over missing bid documents, Madlanga said he found parts of the version hard to accept, The Citizen reported.
“The cancellation itself was as a result of missing documents. That part you just happen not to know. I find that very, very strange.”
Madlanga on the missing documents. The original tender had been cancelled after bid documents went missing, and Malatji said he did not know that detail. The Citizen reported the chairperson's response.
“Nobody could tell us who was having the key.”
Malatji on the missing records. Explaining the bid documents that could not be located ahead of the original tender's cancellation, Malatji described how the records went unaccounted for, The Citizen reported.
“It is not correct, Commissioner. I was not happy.”
Malatji: 'I was not happy'. Responding to the panel on why he had not acted on the cancellation instruction, Malatji acknowledged his objection, Daily News reported.

Our analysis

The bottom line

Day 87 is a reminder that the Madlanga Commission's mandate reaches past headline cartel and political-interference allegations into the unglamorous machinery of municipal procurement, where public money is often lost. The evidence about the TMPD's ad hoc security deployments matters less for any single individual than for what it shows about how a flagged, irregular arrangement can be allowed to continue after an instruction to stop it.

The exchanges reported by Daily News and The Citizen were pointed, but they are questions and challenges, not findings. Madlanga's scepticism about Malatji's account of the missing bid documents goes to credibility, which the panel will weigh against the documentary record before drawing any conclusion. Malatji, for his part, put his objection to the cancellation instruction on the record and disputed the panel's characterisation, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

The open question the day leaves is accountability: who authorised deployments to continue, who benefited, and whether the R14 million figure holds up under scrutiny. Those are exactly the issues a commission is built to test, and the value of the public record here is that the answers should rest on evidence rather than on the political statements that quickly followed the testimony.

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

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