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Parliament's committee on the same allegations splits over Mchunu's task-team directive, a week before its report is due
Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee to Investigate Allegations made by Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi - the National Assembly inquiry running in parallel with this commission on the same July 2025 allegations - sat again on Thursday 4 September 2026 and could not agree on its central question. Per Eyewitness News, members remained divided over whether suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu's 31 December 2024 directive to disband the Political Killings Task Team was connected to shielding organised crime from investigation. Patriotic Alliance MP Ashley Sauls put one position: 'Therefore, we as the committee are able to say we don't see any direct link between the directive and the protection of criminal elements.' EFF MP Leigh-Ann Mathys objected that the committee was in no position to make findings either way: 'We can't even make a finding that there was criminal infiltration, even if there was evidence before us.' The MK Party submitted that the committee should find that Mchunu misrepresented to Parliament the extent of his consultation with President Cyril Ramaphosa before he issued the directive. The committee, chaired by Soviet Lekganyane, was revived by the Speaker under National Assembly Rule 253(6)(c) and must report to the House by 11 September 2026 - three days before this commission's public hearings resume, and ten weeks before the commission's own report is due to the President. Its standing draft findings, reported when the preliminary report was first circulated in July 2026, are that Mchunu faces unresolved executive accountability and integrity concerns over the directive but that the evidence does not establish that he entered a corrupt agreement or acted on the instruction of a cartel, and that suspended deputy national commissioner Lieutenant-General Shadrack Sibiya leaves serious unresolved issues over his handling of 121 dockets and his implementation of the directive without the evidence proving that he acted for Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala, Brown Mogotsi or an organised crime network. A draft report is not an adopted report, and a parliamentary finding is not a criminal verdict. Both men deny wrongdoing, nothing here has been determined against either of them, and both are presumed innocent.
OpenKhan's lawyers say they will challenge his dismissal, a fortnight before he is due on the stand
On Thursday 3 September 2026, the first day of the commission's recess, Major-General Feroz Khan's legal team told Eyewitness News that they have to challenge the South African Police Service's decision to dismiss him, confirmed the previous day. Khan has already been to the Labour Court once on this process: on 31 August Judge Connie Prinsloo struck his urgent application to halt the disciplinary off the roll for want of jurisdiction, alternatively urgency, with costs against his union. He did not attend the expeditious disciplinary hearing, saying he was still recovering from the gunshot wounds he sustained in June 2026 and suffering post-traumatic stress. None of this touches the allegations before the Madlanga Commission, which he has still not answered from the witness box: his evidence is set down for Monday 28 September 2026, and he will be excused only if by 8 September he voluntarily submits to an independent specialist, agreed between his lawyers and the evidence leaders, who reports that he cannot testify. The service defended the outcome the same day: per Eyewitness News, national police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said that 'no member, regardless of rank or position, is above the law or the applicable disciplinary framework'. An employer's decision and an employee's appeal are steps in an employment dispute, not findings on anything the commission is examining. Khan is presumed innocent.
OpenKhan misses the precious-metals case a second time; the state asks for a J50 warrant and the matter goes to November
On the same day he was dismissed, Major-General Feroz Khan failed for the second time to appear in the Kempton Park Magistrate's Court in the illicit precious-metals matter, and the state applied for J50 arrest warrants to secure the accused. Per The Citizen and SABC News his legal team put up medical records to account for the absence. His co-accused are Gauteng Hawks head Major-General Ebrahim Kadwa and businessman Tariq Downes; the three were arrested on 10 May 2026 over a 2021 incident at OR Tambo International Airport in which 75.9 grams of raw gold worth about R62,836 was seized, and all three are out on R20,000 bail each. The charges include corruption, defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Precious Metals Act. The defence complained of disclosure delays, one representative telling the court that 'the state is the author of the situation we find ourselves in', and indicated that a co-accused may make representations to the National Prosecuting Authority for the charges to be withdrawn once outstanding documents are received. The matter was postponed to 27 November 2026. A warrant application and a charge are steps in a prosecution, not findings. Nothing has been tried, none of the three has pleaded, and all are presumed innocent.
OpenSAPS dismisses Feroz Khan, deeming him fired for failing to attend his own disciplinary
The South African Police Service dismissed suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan on Wednesday 2 September 2026. Per the Daily Maverick and Eyewitness News, national police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe confirmed that he was 'deemed dismissed' under Regulation 9(7)(b) of the SAPS Discipline Regulations, for 'failure to appear before the designated senior officer responsible for dealing with the expeditious disciplinary process'. That is a deeming provision rather than a verdict on the merits: the sanction follows from his non-attendance. Khan's position has been that he could not attend because he was still recovering from the gunshot wounds of an apparent assassination attempt in Houghton on 28 June 2026 and was suffering post-traumatic stress. The disciplinary had already produced a finding of guilt on misconduct and bringing the service into disrepute with a recommendation of dismissal, and the Labour Court had struck his bid to stop it off the roll two days earlier. He remains a witness the commission has summoned and has not yet heard. An internal employment outcome is not a criminal conviction and decides none of the untested allegations before the inquiry; Khan is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 172
Witnesses: Dr Mark Shaw, Lt-Gen Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya. The last public sitting before the commission's recess ran two witnesses and two registers. In the morning retired Hawks national head Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya concluded the evidence he began on 27 August, and evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube put a photograph in front of him. It had been recovered from the phone of murder-accused businessman Katiso 'KT' Molefe, and the commission's evidence is that it shows five men it has been calling the 'Big Five': Molefe himself, private security businessman Steve Motsumi, Ignatius Mothakathi, the man known as 'King Nyambose' - reported by SABC News and EWN as Andrew 'Boy' Mthethwa and by TimesLIVE and The Citizen as Jabu Mthethwa - and the late taxi boss Jotham 'Mswazi' Msibi. Lebeya said he knew none of it. 'I have no knowledge of that organised criminal grouping at all, and I even doubt if it is registered as an organised crime project,' he told the panel, per the African News Agency, and of the men in the picture: 'I don't think that it is strange that we do not know all people in South Africa. I do not know them.' The difficulty was a WhatsApp message. On 6 December 2024, the night Molefe was arrested at Sandhurst and Hawks units unexpectedly arrived, the businessman who uses the name Malcolm X wrote to Lebeya: 'Thank you for sending people who verified these gentlemen are policemen and King Nyambose really appreciates all your efforts general.' Lebeya's evidence, per The Citizen, was that he did not engage with it - 'I was not really interested in the message itself' and 'I did not ask him who is this King Nyambose' - and chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga would not leave it there: 'What were you being thanked for? And who on Earth is this Nyambose?' Segeels-Ncube put the pattern to him plainly: 'You were the head of the DPCI and there have been generals that have come before the commission who have been afraid to mention some of these individuals. I just find it bizarre that you do not know any of these individuals.' Lebeya also confirmed he had known since October 2023 that Malcolm X had been arrested with three police officers on corruption and extortion allegations. He closed on his own record: 'I am incorruptible.' In the afternoon the register changed completely. Dr Mark Shaw, executive director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, gave expert evidence placing everything the commission has heard this year inside an international measurement. Per EWN and SABC News, he told the panel that 'South Africa is in the top 5% of all countries in the world in respect of criminal markets and actors as measured by the index', that on a survey of 193 countries South Africa ranks seventh globally for organised crime, that its homicide rate exceeds Colombia's and Mexico's and now resembles Ecuador's, and that the country's criminal markets run from drug trafficking and extortion to financial crime, illicit trade and cybercrime. He tied the ranking to state capture and to criminal infiltration of state institutions, and pointed to what other jurisdictions did about it, including Italy's restructuring of its anti-mafia prosecution system and legislation on the unexplained wealth of public officials. The commission then rose. It goes into recess from 3 to 11 September and resumes on Monday 14 September. Nothing here is a finding. The 'Big Five' remains an alleged network, every person named in the photograph is presumed innocent, Lebeya denies wrongdoing, and none of it has been tested in any court.
OpenMogotsi's fourth bail bid is postponed to 11 September as he answers the escape allegation
North West businessman Brown Mogotsi appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court on 1 September 2026 for a fourth bail application and took the stand to answer the state's allegation, made the previous week, that he had planned to escape from the court holding cells disguised in a Correctional Services uniform. Per EWN he denied it and accused the investigating officer of pursuing a personal vendetta against him, and described how on the morning of 20 August an officer he had never met before boarded his transport vehicle and cuffed his legs. The magistrate did not rule: after Mogotsi challenged the evidence, the state asked for transcripts of his earlier appearances to be placed before the court, and the application was postponed to 11 September 2026. Mogotsi was arrested shortly after testifying at the Madlanga Commission and faces charges including perjury, defeating the ends of justice and unlawful possession of a firearm. He has pleaded to nothing, no court has determined any of it, and he is presumed innocent.
OpenThe commission goes into a short recess from 3 September, and resumes on the 14th
The Madlanga Commission announced on 1 September 2026 that it will go into recess from Thursday 3 September to 11 September 2026, seven working days, with the last day of public hearings before the break on Wednesday 2 September and hearings resuming on Monday 14 September. Per SAnews and the Mail & Guardian, spokesperson Jeremy Michaels said the recess is necessary so that two of the commissioners can honour commitments they made at the time the commission was due to have completed its work by 31 August 2026, the deadline that has since been extended. The commission's senior functionaries and extended team continue working through the break, preparing for the hearings that resume on 14 September. The dates that bracket everything else remain unchanged: public evidence closes on 2 October 2026 and the final report is due to President Cyril Ramaphosa on 16 November 2026. This is a scheduling announcement and not a finding on anything before the inquiry.
OpenChairperson Ruling re. Maj. Gen. F. Khan postponement application
An official ruling added to the Madlanga Commission record.
OpenDay 171
Witness: Lt-Gen Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya. Two matters shared the second-to-last sitting before the commission's short recess. The first was the appearance the inquiry has been trying to secure since June. Suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan was under subpoena to appear at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College on Tuesday morning and did not come; only his legal team did. The cross-examination of retired Hawks national head Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya was stood down so the panel could hear Khan's postponement application, and what the commission got was not a medical argument but a documentary one. Per the Mail & Guardian and TimesLIVE, evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim SC put up an affidavit from Khan's treating doctor, Dr Fine, in which the doctor said he had altered a medical certificate at the request of Khan's son. The original, dated 22 May 2026, recorded that Khan would be fit to return to work on 30 June; a version produced on 20 August moved that date to 27 June and added a diagnosis of extreme stress, depression and anxiety. The doctor said he warned that changing a certificate already handed in could amount to fraud, and was told it had not been handed in. Hassim said the police records showed that it had, and that what SAPS had actually asked Khan for was more detail on his diagnosis, not a new date. 'It was a lie,' she told the commission, per The Citizen. She also framed why the commission was pressing: the interest 'is not an interest in General Khan's health as such - it's an interest in understanding why a senior public officer who is under a compulsory process' should not have to appear. Khan's counsel resisted an independent examination, invoking a 'white coat effect' and warning of 'a further cascade of the current condition that is recorded in the latest report'. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga refused to grant the postponement outright and instead borrowed the mechanism the commission used with Suleiman Carrim: Khan's evidence is postponed to Monday 28 September 2026 at 09:30, and he will be excused from appearing then only if he voluntarily submits by 8 September to an independent medical specialist agreed between his representatives and the evidence leaders, and that specialist reports that he cannot testify. His outstanding statement is due by 18 September. His general condition must be disclosed to the commission; the clinical detail may stay confidential. With the ruling delivered, Lebeya returned to the stand for his second appearance and evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube moved him off the Sandhurst arrest and onto the roughly 541kg of cocaine worth about R200 million that was seized at Durban harbour in 2021 and then stolen from a walk-in safe at the Hawks' Port Shepstone offices. Lebeya said he learned where the consignment was being kept only after it was gone: 'I can't recall him informing me as to where he has stored the drugs.' That is the opposite of what former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Major General Lesetja Senona told this commission, which was that he had told Lebeya the Port Shepstone offices had safely stored a large quantity before. Segeels-Ncube put the fork to him directly: 'Because it's either that General Senona is lying, or you're lying, or you're both mistaken about what transpired.' Lebeya would not take it: 'I cannot say Senona had lied.' The commission also heard that the CCTV cameras and alarms at the office were not working and there was no round-the-clock guard, that firearms stored in the same place were left untouched, and that Senona had members down to the cleaners polygraphed after the theft while never being polygraphed himself, though the evidence is that he held keys to the safe room. Lebeya said the discipline of a provincial head's own conduct was a matter for the supervisory line, and said he had ordered both a fact-finding inquiry and a criminal investigation once he learned of the theft. He is part-heard. Nothing here is a finding. The allegations about the certificate, the theft and the storage are untested, no court has determined any of them, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenKhan's subpoena stands despite a return to hospital, and the Carrim criminal case is opened
The Madlanga Commission's spokesperson Jeremy Michaels briefed reporters on 31 August 2026 on two matters that both bear on whether the inquiry finishes its programme. On suspended Major-General Feroz Khan, subpoenaed to give evidence on Tuesday 1 September 2026, Michaels said the subpoena stands: per the African News Agency and SABC News, Khan had been readmitted to hospital days before the date, his legal team had been in contact with the commission and had signalled a possible postponement application, but no application had been lodged, and the commission's position is that the summons remains in force unless it is formally set aside. Khan's appearances have been postponed on medical grounds several times since June 2026 and his lawyers previously invited the commission to verify his condition in hospital. Separately, Michaels confirmed that the criminal case against North West businessman Suleiman Carrim was opened last week by the commission's secretary, giving effect to the chairperson's 14 August 2026 ruling that charges be laid over Carrim's repeated failure to appear. Michaels said the commission was working to complete its programme by its deadline; public evidence closes on 2 October 2026 and the final report is due on 16 November 2026. Opening a case and holding a subpoena in force are procedural steps, not findings. Neither man has been convicted of anything, the allegations before the commission that concern them are untested, and both are presumed innocent.
OpenKhan loses his Labour Court bid to stop the police disciplinary that has recommended his dismissal
On Monday 31 August 2026, the day before he was due before the Madlanga Commission under subpoena, Labour Court Judge Connie Prinsloo struck suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan's urgent application off the roll for lack of jurisdiction, alternatively lack of urgency, and ordered his union, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, to pay the costs. Per The Citizen and Business Day, the application sought to halt the South African Police Service disciplinary process against him and challenged the role of KwaZulu-Natal district commissioner Jabulani Khumalo as chairperson of it. The disciplinary went ahead without his participation and, per TimesLIVE, produced a finding of guilt on misconduct and bringing the police service into disrepute, with a recommendation that dismissal is the appropriate sanction. A recommendation is not a dismissal and an internal employment finding is not a criminal conviction. Neither decides any of the allegations before the commission, none of which has been tested, and Khan is presumed innocent.
OpenMADLANGA SEPT RECESS
An official ruling added to the Madlanga Commission record.
OpenDay 170
Witness: Lieutenant-Col Deenadayalan Govender. Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan 'Deena' Govender, head of the Hawks' KwaZulu-Natal provincial tracing team and the officer at the centre of the commission's hit-squad phase, returned to the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College to continue the evidence he began on 21 August, before chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC. He came back having lost a procedural fight: per EWN his application to give this part of his evidence behind closed doors was refused on Sunday, so the questions about his bank accounts were asked in public. Two hearings then ran inside one sitting. In the first he was the accuser, hardening the allegation he first made on Day 164 into something with a date and an artefact: that on 20 August 2026, the day before he first took the stand, a man he names as Mavuso Ntandane pressed him to give evidence that provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had sanctioned 172 extra-judicial police shootings, that suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu was telephoned during the meeting and spoke to him, and that he recorded it. 'I know the minister's voice, I know it was him,' he told the commission, and of Mchunu: 'I respect this minister and I know him, I like him. But as an elder and senior person in government, he cannot lie.' Per the Sowetan he also testified that he was told acting national commissioner Lieutenant-General Puleng Dimpane had given Mkhwanazi seven days to explain the June 2026 briefing at which Mkhwanazi said 'we are at war' while Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo was inside Brooklyn police station, and that when he raised it Mkhwanazi told him 'you were not supposed to know about this'. In the second half he was the subject. Per The Citizen, Chaskalson took him through 65 cash deposits totalling R1.7 million into accounts held by him and his wife between August 2022 and December 2023 and told him the pattern had 'all the hallmarks of money laundering'. Govender broke down a R2.35 million property purchase across a bank loan, a mortgage bond, his son's account, his wife's credit card and R337,962 from a businessman he named as Josh Chellin; attributed other deposits to an FNB loan and to family; and, confronted with having credited the same two payments to his brother in bank records and to Chellin in his sworn affidavit, said 'I made a mistake somewhere along the line'. He denied taking money from Durban tow-truck operator Clive Naicker and denied any personal tie to him: 'My relationship with Clive Naicker is work-related. He assists with investigations. Um, I don't have a personal relationship with him, commissioner.' He is part-heard. Nothing here is a finding. His allegation against Mchunu is untested and Mchunu denies it; the allegations against Govender are untested, no court has considered them, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenThe commission refuses Govender's bid to give his financial evidence in camera
On Sunday 30 August 2026, the day before Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan 'Deena' Govender was due back on the stand, the Madlanga Commission refused his application to give part of his evidence behind closed doors and published the ruling to its own record. Per EWN and Fullview, the application concerned the questions the evidence leaders intended to put to him about money: the deposits into accounts held by him and his wife that the Independent Police Investigative Directorate has linked, in untested evidence, to a tow-truck company owner and to the killing of Bevan Loftus. The refusal meant that when the sitting opened on 31 August, chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC took Govender through 65 cash deposits totalling R1.7 million in an open hearing carried live. The commission has held closed sessions before, for protected witnesses whose safety was at issue; it declined to treat a serving senior officer's personal banking as the same category. This is a procedural ruling on how evidence is heard. It is not a finding on any allegation against Govender, none of which has been tested or considered by any court, and he is presumed innocent.
OpenCommission - Govender ruling (in camera)
An official ruling added to the Madlanga Commission record.
OpenMasemola asks the NDPP to drop his charges, and a seven-member panel is reviewing the prosecution of the national commissioner
National Commissioner of Police Lieutenant-General Fannie Masemola appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Friday 28 August 2026 as accused number one in the R228 million SAPS Medicare24 tender prosecution, alongside twelve others. Per The Citizen and Eyewitness News, his legal team submitted formal representations to National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Andy Mothibi on 7 August 2026 asking that the prosecution against him be withdrawn, and Mothibi has authorised a case assessment panel of seven senior National Prosecuting Authority and Special Investigating Unit officials to review it. State prosecutor Santhos Manilall told the court: 'I cannot give you a date when they will be complete with the assessment, but they understand the urgency of this matter.' Masemola faces four counts under the Public Finance Management Act, and not the fraud, corruption and money-laundering counts laid against several of his co-accused; the allegations against him are that he failed to prevent irregular expenditure and allowed payments to continue after the irregularity had been flagged. The matter was transferred to the Pretoria Regional Court and postponed to 29 September 2026. Representations are a routine step available to any accused and their submission is not an indication that they will succeed. The charges are untested, no court has determined any of them, and Masemola is presumed innocent.
OpenThe blue-lights case reaches court: three men and three companies charged, and Julius Mkhwanazi's bail ruling is reserved to 14 September
The blue-lights allegation that has run through the Madlanga Commission's evidence since its earliest sittings became a live prosecution on Friday 28 August 2026, when suspended Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi appeared in the Germiston Magistrate's Court alongside businessman Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala and EMPD fleet manager Chris Steyn. Per TimesLIVE and The Citizen the three men are charged with corruption, fraud and defeating the ends of justice, together with three companies: Cat VIP Protection, Medicare 24 and Black AK Trading. The state's case, which began with media questions in February 2023 about municipal vehicles allegedly used by Matlala's private security firm, is that Mkhwanazi drafted an unauthorised memorandum of understanding with Cat VIP Protection, that four private vehicles were registered on the EMPD fleet and fitted with blue lights and sirens without proper authority, and that he received about R70,000 from companies associated with Matlala. The state did not oppose bail, but the magistrate reserved judgment on Mkhwanazi after finding that certain aspects needed further consideration, and he stays in custody at Benoni police station until the ruling on 14 September 2026. Matlala postponed his own bail application. Steyn was granted R10,000 bail, the court noting he is married with three adult children, has no previous convictions and has undergone major heart surgery; he and Matlala return to court on 9 October 2026. These are charges, not findings. Nobody has pleaded, nothing has been tried, and all three men and the three companies are presumed innocent. This Julius Mkhwanazi is the suspended EMPD official, not Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the KwaZulu-Natal commissioner whose July 2025 briefing triggered the inquiry.
OpenDay 169
Witness: Madoda Johannes 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni. For a year this commission has heard about Joe 'Ferrari' Sibanyoni from other people. On Friday he came to the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College and read his own statement into the record. Madoda Johannes Sibanyoni, 60, president of the South African Local and Long Distance Taxi and Bus Organisation and the owner of a fleet of roughly 400 minibus taxis across Gauteng and Mpumalanga, was subpoenaed under a Rule 10.6 notice to answer the extortion and money laundering allegations that suspended Sergeant Fannie Nkosi and others put before the commission, and the claim that he is one of the businessmen in the syndicate Crime Intelligence calls the Big Five. He rejected it and told the commission a different story: that he was not the cartel's member but its target. He said gunmen shot him in 2006 and again in August 2022, that he does not regard surviving twice as fortune but as providence, and that 'when gunmen opened fire upon me in 2006 and again in August 2022, it was not merely a man they shot; it was a husband and a father'. He named the late taxi mogul Jotham 'King Mswazi' Msibi as the man behind the violence, said the two had agreed to retire at 60 and that Msibi later told him 'we die in the business', which he took as a threat, and said that after he confronted Msibi over the 2006 attempt, Msibi surrounded himself with men known in the industry as izinkabi, the isiZulu term for hitmen. He told the commission that Msibi's death in January 2024 brought relief because 'the source of the threat and so much suffering directed at me was gone', and that he was afterwards voted Msibi's successor at the head of the taxi body. He said he had taken his information to the police: per EWN he asked then Police Minister Bheki Cele for an inquiry and was refused. He also told the commission that the killing of the musician Oupa 'DJ Sumbody' Sefoka in November 2022 and the attempted killing of Seunkie 'DJ Vettys' Mokubung in 2024 were attacks on people close to him: 'the attempted life of DJ Vettys, and Mr Sefoka being killed, it was a matter of people that are close to me.' The same rifle has been ballistically linked to the Sefoka murder and to the attempt on Sibanyoni's own life. He separately faces extortion and money laundering charges over an alleged R2.2 million in protection fees demanded from a mining businessman between 2022 and 2025, which he denies, and he is the state's first witness in the attempted murder trial of Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala over the 2022 shooting. He read his statement without completing his evidence; cross-examination was set down for 21 September 2026. Nothing here is a finding. Everything Sibanyoni says about Msibi, who is dead, and everything said about Sibanyoni by other witnesses is untested, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenJulius Mkhwanazi served with a fifth arrest warrant, over the blue lights on Matlala's cars
Suspended Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi was served with a fifth arrest warrant on 27 August 2026, at the Brakpan Magistrates Court, as proceedings in the Emmanuel Mbense murder case in which he is an accused rose for the day. Per EWN, News24 and the Mail & Guardian, investigators from the Independent Police Investigative Directorate served the warrant in connection with the blue-lights investigation: he is alleged to have unlawfully approved the fitting of emergency blue lights to four private luxury vehicles - two BMWs, a Mercedes-Benz and a Volkswagen - linked to the security company of businessman Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. The fresh charges are reported as fraud and corruption, and he is due to appear on them alongside Matlala. It is the fifth separate set of charges he now faces. The blue-lights allegation has been before the Madlanga Commission since the earliest evidence about Matlala's relationship with the police. An arrest warrant is a step in a prosecution and not a finding: nothing has been tried, Mkhwanazi has not pleaded to these charges, and both he and Matlala are presumed innocent.
OpenDay 168
Witness: Lt-Gen Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya. Retired Lieutenant General Seswantsho Godfrey Lebeya, national head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation from 2018 until his retirement in 2025, took the stand at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College for the first time, led by evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube, to answer the allegation that he sent Hawks members to interfere with the arrest of murder-accused businessman Katiso 'KT' Molefe at Sandhurst on 6 December 2024. The day opened on money rather than evidence: his attorney Eric Nwedo told the commission that Lebeya was appearing at his own expense after the South African Police Service refused his 12 November 2025 application for state-funded legal representation on 6 January 2026, arguing that the deciding official, Deputy National Commissioner Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili, had once served under Lebeya and that the stated reason - that his version differs from the version of other police witnesses - was frivolous. Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga said the commission had no power to direct the police and that the remedy was a review: 'I do not think we can come to the doctor's assistance.' On the substance Lebeya denied the premise of the allegation, saying 'I do not know Mr Katiso Molefe. I was not contacted by Mr Katiso Molefe; I was contacted by Malcolm X' - a Johannesburg businessman he says he first met in April 2023 and regards as neither friend nor enemy, and who told eNCA in July 2025 that he made the call for Molefe's brother to ask whether there was a warrant. Lebeya said he directed two senior managers to verify the claim that people were impersonating the Hawks in his name, that he had never instructed members of the directorate to interrupt a legitimate police operation, and that with more than thirty known impersonation cases behind him, 'a reasonable national head who is aware of the existence of imposters will not sit back and do nothing'. He then put the failure on the chain of command, saying the operation was never communicated to him and that the obligation to inform the national head sat with the provincial commissioner in consultation with Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo. A second strand went elsewhere entirely: Lebeya testified that private investigator Paul O'Sullivan sought an update from him on the classified Phala Phala investigation and that he refused, and that O'Sullivan said at the time he was sitting with Dr Bejani Chauke, a political adviser to President Cyril Ramaphosa, whom he called a friend. Per SABC News, Lebeya also confirmed that he discussed the misconduct allegations against former IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson with then National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shamila Batohi, corroborating evidence the commission heard in July 2026. He was part-heard when the sitting rose. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Molefe is charged and has not been convicted, O'Sullivan, Chauke, Johnson and Batohi have not answered this evidence before the commission, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 167
Witness: Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. On his fourth day in the chair Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala was taken off the taxi bosses and the tender partners and onto a policeman. The subject was Major General Lesetja Senona, until June the provincial head of the KwaZulu-Natal Hawks, and the question the commission put all day was whether what Matlala calls a brotherly friendship was in fact a serving general working the inside of the state for a private contractor. Matlala's answer was that it was neither improper nor transactional. He described Senona as 'not friends but he's my older brother', said they met around 2018 or 2019 at a wedding, and told the commission that after police raided his Pretoria home on 6 December 2024 and seized his phones, leaving him unable to transact, the general lent him R20,000. When a second raid followed on 18 December 2024 Senona undertook to find out what was behind it and, on Matlala's account, never came back with anything. The commission then put the documents up. WhatsApp messages of 13 May 2025 showed Senona advising Matlala to take legal advice with a view to challenging the South African Police Service's cancellation of the R360 million Medicare24 contract; asked what interest a Hawks general had in a police contract, Matlala said there was none, 'but he knows that I need the contract'. Senona also accompanied him to a meeting with KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi at Umhlanga on 15 April 2025, a meeting Matlala said was arranged by former police minister Bheki Cele and sought so that he could reach the police human resources head about his company's non-performance problems; Matlala said Senona took no part in the tender discussion. It was at that meeting, he told the commission, that he raised payments made to Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya, insisting the payments were made by other people and not by him. Where the questioning turned to a joint property venture with Senona and the general's son Thato, an apartment bought to rent out for under R3 million, Matlala refused to answer at all, saying his conduct with Senona is itself under investigation for corruption. Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga noted that Senona had given the commission his own account of that project and asked for the inconsistency to be explained. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Senona denies wrongdoing and has given evidence of his own, Sibiya has not answered this account before the commission, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenCorrectional Services denies it obstructed Matlala's preparation
The Department of Correctional Services has rejected the account Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala's legal team gave the Madlanga Commission on 24 August 2026, when Advocate Fatima Missi cited difficulty consulting her client at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre in Pretoria as one of the grounds for asking that his evidence stand down. Departmental spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo told EWN that the team had access on three consecutive days, 21 to 23 August 2026, and was given office space: 'On the 21st of August, a team of five lawyers visited without any form of hindrance; they were there until they finished and they left.' He said security procedures were in place because the venue is a correctional facility but did not interfere with the consultations, and characterised the complaint as an attempt to shift responsibility for the defence team's own difficulties. The department's position is consistent with the message from area commissioner Khoza that was read into the commission's record on the day, which said the team had consulted for three days and that concessions could be made at any time. The commission refused the stand-down. Nothing here bears on the truth of any allegation before the commission, and Matlala is presumed innocent on all charges he faces.
OpenDay 166
Witness: Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. With his lead counsel Advocate Annelene van den Heever back in the room after a day's illness, Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala returned to the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College for a second consecutive day - and for the first time in this stream the commission got past the procedural fight and into the money. Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello SC broke the deadlock over the privilege against self-incrimination by narrowing it: the privilege is not a blanket, she argued, a person can only incriminate themselves in relation to a specific offence, and Matlala is not a suspect in the Special Investigating Unit's Tembisa Hospital case. Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, invoking Constitutional Court authority that a claim of privilege must fall within clearly defined parameters rather than be asserted in general terms, directed that he answer. He then did. Matlala told the commission that he and businessman Hangwani 'Morgan' Maumela - identified by the SIU as the central figure in an alleged R820 million procurement fraud at Tembisa Hospital - met over a shared enthusiasm for sports cars around 2015 or 2016, put roughly R1 million each into a joint account, and used a company between them to answer requests for quotation from the Gauteng Department of Health from about 2018, each taking ten percent of what the other brought in, for something in the order of R5 million over five years. He also drew the first direct line the commission has heard between Maumela and the late taxi boss Jotham 'King Mswazi' Msibi, named in evidence as a former leader of the alleged 'Big Five' cartel, saying he introduced the two men - the occasion being a Pagani Huayra that Maumela wanted to sell and for which Msibi was to find a buyer. WhatsApp messages were put up showing Matlala's intention to buy a private jet with Msibi. Earlier, Advocate Sello and Advocate van den Heever clashed over whether the defence could interrupt a line of questioning before it was finished. The commission adjourned with Matlala still part-heard. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Maumela has not answered any of it before this commission, Msibi is dead and can answer none of it, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenMchunu rejects Govender's account of the phone call
Suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has denied the allegation put to the Madlanga Commission on 21 August 2026 by Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender of the Hawks: that an associate of the minister, Mavuso Ntandane, repeatedly pressed Govender to give evidence implicating KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in a series of police shootings, and that at a meeting the day before Govender testified Ntandane telephoned Mchunu and handed the officer the phone. Govender told the commission he recognised the minister's voice and that the minister said 'this is a very nice country; we must not let anyone ruin this country' before urging him to tell the commission he had been acting on Mkhwanazi's instructions. Per the Daily Maverick, Mchunu answered: 'The allegation is made without any evidence and I reject it with the contempt it deserves', and characterised the claim as opportunistic. Reports carried on 24 August 2026 repeated his position that he did not interfere with Govender's evidence. This is the second occasion on which Mchunu has been accused of attempting to steer a witness before this commission, and the second on which he has denied it. Govender's allegation is untested, the recording he says he holds of his conversation with Ntandane has not been played in the hearing room, and the commission has made no finding. Mchunu and Ntandane are both presumed innocent.
OpenDay 165
Witness: Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. The commission spent a sitting day arguing about whether it could sit at all. Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala returned to the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College under subpoena to account for what his first statement left out - among the omissions, the names of suspended deputy national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Shadrack Sibiya, former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Major-General Lesetja Senona and former organised crime head Major-General Richard Shibiri - and instead the day was consumed by a fight over his lawyers. His lead counsel, Advocate Annelene van den Heever, was too ill to attend. Her junior, Advocate Fatima Missi, asked for the evidence to stand down to Tuesday so that a replying affidavit and heads of argument on Matlala's claim to the privilege against self-incrimination could be filed, and told the commission that consulting her client at Kgosi Mampuru II had been obstructed. Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim opposed the request and said the application could have been brought months earlier. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga refused the stand-down, observing that written submissions are prepared in the main for the assistance of the decision-maker, and ordered that the self-incrimination argument be heard at midday. Missi then told the commission that if it would not give her the afternoon, her instructions were to bring an application interdicting the proceedings - a threat that collapsed after the lunch adjournment when Matlala, asked directly from the witness box, said he had not decided whether his lawyers should withdraw and was 'actually in the dark'. Commissioner Sesi Baloyi called the gap between counsel's instructions and her client's answer deeply problematic. The planned self-incrimination application was withdrawn for the day and Matlala's evidence continued. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation before the commission is untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenThe NPA unconditionally withdraws the Crime Intelligence charges, and the seven walk free
The prosecution that this commission has spent two months taking apart formally ended on 21 August 2026. In the Pretoria Magistrate's Court, state advocate Joy Hlatshwayo told the magistrate she was instructed by the office of the National Director of Public Prosecutions that the representations had been considered and that all charges of corruption and fraud against all seven accused were to be withdrawn, adding: 'My instructions are that the state is withdrawing unconditionally.' The magistrate told the accused: 'All the charges against all of you have been withdrawn by the public prosecutor. You are free to go.' Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo, Brigadier Dineo Mokwele, Major-General Philani Lushaba, Major-General Nosipho Precious Madondo, Major-General Josias Lekalakala, Major-General Zwelithini Gabela and Brigadier Phindile Ncube were arrested in June 2025 over Mokwele's appointment to head Crime Intelligence's Technical Support Services. The National Prosecuting Authority had provisionally withdrawn the charges on 27 July 2026; this withdrawal is unconditional, and the matter may not be re-enrolled without the express written approval of NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi. NPA spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago attributed the decision to the evidence gathered and to serious irregularities in the handling of the case, and the authority cited undisputed evidence tendered during the IDAC stream of the Madlanga Commission. Khumalo said outside court that he would 'continue working and serving the people of South Africa', and acting national commissioner Lieutenant-General Puleng Dimpane welcomed the withdrawal. The same morning, two kilometres away, the man whose section 27 complaint founded the case told the commission: 'I do believe I was used.' A withdrawal is not an acquittal, but the prosecution is over and none of the allegations was ever tested. All seven are presumed innocent.
OpenDay 164
Witnesses: Lieutenant-Col Deenadayalan Govender, Fadiel Adams. The man whose complaint started the Crime Intelligence prosecution finished his evidence by saying he had been used, and the officer at the centre of the KwaZulu-Natal hit-squad allegations finally took the stand to answer them. Fadiel Adams opened his third day at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College by apologising for being under-prepared and retracting parts of Thursday's account: he had not phoned the man he knew as 'Elvis' from inside Orlando SAPS, he said - Elvis was at a tyre shop, sent his location, and the two arrived at the station together. He also accepted that Lieutenant-General Peter Jacobs was entitled to call for his dockets, abandoning the suggestion that their move to Pretoria was sinister. Evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube then played the recording of his 6 January 2025 consultation with IDAC state advocate Drushantha Ramsamy - over his objection, and after he told the commission he intends to lay criminal charges against her and report her to the Legal Practice Council. On the recording Adams told IDAC he had no connections at Orlando police station, the opposite of the evidence he has now given about Witness G, the Crime Intelligence colonel described in evidence as Brown Mogotsi's handler and a friend of Major-General Feroz Khan. Commissioner Sesi Baloyi called it deliberate: 'You changed it today because you were confronted with the facts.' She also confronted him with a second contradiction - that he told Parliament's ad hoc committee that suspended Inspector-General of Intelligence Imtiaz Fazel had phoned him personally, and told this commission it was a member of Fazel's staff - and put the consequence to him: 'One of these two institutions must hold you to have lied under oath.' Adams called it a 'genuine, stupid, sloppy mistake'. He conceded too that he had not been truthful about when he first contacted Police Minister Senzo Mchunu's chief of staff Cedrick Nkabinde, an email trail showing contact before the 1 November 2024 date he had given. On the section 27 referral that founded the whole prosecution he maintained that the version IDAC produced is not his: 'Someone has altered this thing. I don't know why; I don't know how.' Asked at the end whether he had been used, he did not fight it: 'I do believe I was used.' Then the KwaZulu-Natal phase resumed. Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender - attached to the Serious Organised Crime Unit of the Hawks and head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation's KwaZulu-Natal provincial tracing team, and the officer IPID's Len Barnabas John and the family of Bevan Loftus have named in evidence over alleged extrajudicial killings and alleged payments of millions of rands - took the stand for the first time, before evidence leaders Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC, Advocate Mpilo Sikhakhane and Advocate Teboho Mosikili. Elsewhere in Pretoria the same morning, the National Prosecuting Authority formally and unconditionally withdrew all fraud and corruption charges against Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and six Crime Intelligence co-accused. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 163
Witness: Fadiel Adams. Fadiel Adams named his source, and the source is dead. Continuing his evidence at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College under evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube, the National Coloured Congress MP told the Madlanga Commission that roughly 90 percent of what he alleged about Crime Intelligence came from the late Major-General Andre Lincoln, the former head of Nelson Mandela's Presidential Investigation Task Unit and of the Western Cape Anti-Gang Unit, who died on 30 May 2025. Adams had not named him to the police minister, to the Inspector-General of Intelligence or to IDAC, and only did so after Lincoln died: 'I wouldn't have mentioned him if he was alive.' The day turned on a 39-minute paper trail. Adams laid charges at Orlando SAPS in Soweto on 31 October 2024; the docket bears a 13:30 stamp. At 08:21 the next morning an email sent through fellow NCC MP Sakiena Frenchman's address told suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu that Gauteng police had 'followed the same modus operandi as the Western Cape' and were interfering in the investigation. It was forwarded to Mchunu's chief of staff Cedrick Nkabinde at 08:25 and at 09:04 Nkabinde instructed a major-general to report back by Monday 4 November. Segeels-Ncube put it to Adams that nothing had happened in those hours except a phone call from Lincoln, and told him: 'No, Mr Adams, you have the CAS numbers now. You cannot rely on a dead man every time. It is unacceptable.' Adams conceded the wording was wrong: 'I will concede that I could have worded it better.' Commissioner Sesi Baloyi said the sequence 'stinks of machinations' and that 'there is just something wrong about this whole process'. Commissioner Sandile Khumalo took apart the allegation that Adams's dockets had been hidden in a safe in Pretoria: they went to national office because Adams's own complaint to the minister triggered an inspectorate investigation under Divisional Commissioner Lieutenant-General Peter Jacobs, whose Colonel Phillips called Adams repeatedly and was, on Adams's own admission, brushed off on Lincoln's advice. Adams accepted it: 'I understand and I accept that I'm the one that muddied the water.' The commission also put Witness G to him - the Crime Intelligence colonel identified in evidence as Brown Mogotsi's handler and a friend of suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan - as the man Adams knew only as 'Elvis', who met him at Orlando and handed him to a detective. Adams confirmed the identification, denied ever meeting the man again, and denied that Mogotsi had any hand in where he laid the charges, saying he spoke to Mogotsi once by phone, at Lincoln's house, about Lincoln's unpaid pension. The morning opened with a subpoenaed Johannesburg Metro Police officer being stood down because no statement had been filed, and the sitting adjourned early at 14:00 so Adams could listen to the full two-and-a-half-hour recording of his 6 January 2025 IDAC consultation, made by state advocate Drushantha Ramsamy, before clips are played. He resumes at 09:30 on 21 August. Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Adams has himself laid a criminal case against IDAC officials, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 162
Witness: Fadiel Adams. Fadiel Adams - Member of Parliament, leader of the National Coloured Congress, and the complainant whose section 27 referral founded the entire Crime Intelligence prosecution - returned to the Madlanga Commission at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College and admitted that what he had told the commission about the correspondence was wrong. His first appearance on 11 August had collapsed into a dispute about a ten-month delay in filing his statement, which he blamed on a Parliament-issued laptop that persistently froze; chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga called the explanation unbelievable, Parliament said its ICT records showed no such fault, and his evidence was put off to 19 August. On Wednesday the chairperson took him through the paper trail himself. A Rule 3 notice, sent through the commission's attorney on 3 October 2025, asked Adams to answer allegations that KwaZulu-Natal commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had made against him - that he had obtained Crime Intelligence information he was not entitled to and had used it recklessly to pursue charges against members of the Political Killings Task Team. Adams had told the commission he only saw that request about three months ago. The record showed he answered it on 14 October 2025, eleven days later, and asked to testify. 'The information I submitted was wrong,' he said. 'I did forget about this email.' He resisted the suggestion that he had set out to mislead anyone - 'I could have done better and should have done better' - and told the commission, 'I take the Madlanga Commission seriously.' On the emails he did receive, he said: 'I observed an email asking three questions, however I expected more questions, therefore I did not respond to it,' adding that he had had numerous issues with his laptop. Madlanga noted that Parliament issues members three devices. Adams said he had sent a lawyer's letter challenging Parliament's account and that its technicians could verify the fault. The commission also played back media interviews in which Adams denied receiving any correspondence from the inquiry while simultaneously claiming he had approached it himself. The substance behind the credibility fight is the reason he matters: Adams laid six criminal cases in 2024 against Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and other senior officers and took his complaint to the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, and it is that referral the commission has spent a month examining - the case the National Prosecuting Authority provisionally withdrew on 27 July 2026 before plea. Adams is himself serving a 20-day suspension from Parliament, imposed on 5 August 2026 over an ethics finding unrelated to this inquiry. Nothing here is a finding against him. The allegations he made and the allegations made about him are all untested, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 161
No witness took the stand - the official record for the day reads 'Witness : None' after Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala's testimony was postponed to 24 August - and the Madlanga Commission spent the sitting inside a dead man's phone instead. Evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC led WhatsApp messages, photographs and videos extracted from devices belonging to the late taxi boss Jotham 'King Mswazi' Msibi, described in evidence as a former leader of the alleged 'Big Five' cartel. The centrepiece was an alleged plan to acquire a 'grabber' - an IMSI catcher capable of covertly intercepting cellphone communications - from a Czech Republic supplier by representing that the buyer was the South African Police Service, and then to resell the technology in eSwatini. On the messages led in evidence the alleged participants were Msibi, suspended SAPS sergeant Fannie Nkosi, murder-accused businessman Katiso 'KT' Molefe and private security businessman Steve Motsumi, with Nkosi alleged to have applied SAPS stamps to the procurement paperwork. Chaskalson told the commission: 'The Czech Republic has been told that this is a demonstration for the South African Police Service.' The chats date from January 2023 and refer to the 'Swazi deal'; Msibi's own message on it reads, 'It's on the table but they have to display. We don't want to become fools.' A separate procurement thread involving suppliers in Paris and Hamburg concerned active monitoring systems valued at about R1.16 million. The second strand moved to Ekurhuleni. Chaskalson showed that on 26 April 2023 Msibi sent businessman Zesimdumise 'Ze' Nxumalo the details of a contract for the project management unit and technical services on Ekurhuleni's integrated rapid public transport network, months before Camp Rock, a company linked to Msibi's interests, won it; that Msibi pressed 'have you spoken to Jose, please, and the Ekurhuleni issue' and Nxumalo answered 'please give me until Tuesday, all will be well'; and that in October 2023 Nxumalo confirmed the submission had reached the bid evaluation committee. On 23 September 2023 Motsumi sent Msibi the contact details of Dr Imogen Mashazi, then Ekurhuleni's city manager, and Msibi called her two days later - the commissioners were careful to say they do not know what was said on that call and that no inference should be drawn. A message about roughly EUR46,256 said 'she' had received about R1 million; Commissioner Sandile Khumalo stated plainly, 'we have not established that the she is her', and the commission said it would approach the South African Reserve Bank for the banking records. A third strand was new: a joint venture between businessman Suleiman Carrim's Ziggy Investments and Transnational Coaches connected to subsidised bus contracts in Gauteng and the North West, with R700,000 paid to Santaco, R300,000 outstanding from North West entities and R1 million paid into Tucofin, a company of which Msibi was a director. Chaskalson said the connection had not previously been identified by investigators. The day closed on photographs and video of a cannabis growing operation at Jack Frost Pharmaceuticals in Germiston, which the evidence suggested was in production before the licence issued on 19 September 2022: 'what we are looking at is production that took place before a licence was issued, or certainly before this licence was issued.' Msibi is dead and cannot answer any of it. Everyone else named has given no evidence in answer, none of it has been tested, no court has considered it, and all of them are presumed innocent.
OpenDay 160
Witness: Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. The witness the whole inquiry has been waiting for finally took the stand, and then declined to answer most of what he was asked. Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala - the businessman named in Crime Intelligence testimony as a leading figure in the alleged 'Big Five' cartel, and the man whose R360 million SAPS Medicare24 health-services tender runs through the spine of this commission - appeared under subpoena at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria, his appearance brought forward from 1 September. Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello led him; his counsel was Advocate Annelene van den Heever; Commissioner Sandile Khumalo sat with chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga. Matlala read a set of denials into the record and then, on almost every question that touched his pending criminal trial, invoked the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination. He denied any relationship with suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu - 'I have never met Minister Mchunu and have had no interactions with him' - and said the same of suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Maj-Gen Feroz Khan. He said none of his companies were ever awarded a contract by the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department and that CAT VIP Protection provided security to former Ekurhuleni mayor Tania Campbell without financial gain. He confirmed he had met KwaZulu-Natal commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, but refused to say what was discussed. On the alleged delivery of 20 live impala to Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya's farm, captured on a recording, he said: 'I do not want to incriminate myself because I know that the recordings are under investigation.' On the Medicare24 tender itself he placed on record only that it had since been terminated, and claimed privilege. He did make admissions: that he approached businessman Suleiman Carrim for funding and that the arrangement was a R15 million loan - Carrim told the commission in March it was R10 million - and that Hangwani Morgan Maumela is a friend and former business associate who was once a director of CAT VIP Protection, per IOL's report from the hearing. He said he knew three Gauteng businessmen linked to alleged criminal syndicates, among them the late taxi boss Jotham Msibi. Of former commission witness Brown Mogotsi, who first approached him after a police raid claiming to be from Mchunu's office, Matlala said: 'I actually hate him. He caused a lot of problems for me.' Commissioner Khumalo corrected him on his own corporate footprint, pointing out that the evidence showed three companies, not two: Medicare24, CAT VIP Protection and Black AK Trading and Supplies. Sello pressed the limits of the privilege - 'the question is simple: were you induced or threatened to give false information?' - but the day ended in adjournment rather than answers: Matlala's team is to file a supplementary affidavit and his testimony resumes on Monday 24 August 2026. Nothing said or refused here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Matlala's fraud, corruption and money-laundering trial is set down for 11 September 2026, and he and everyone he named are presumed innocent.
OpenThe commission resolves to lay criminal charges against Suleiman Carrim
For the first time in its existence, the Madlanga Commission has resolved to lay criminal charges against a person summoned to give evidence. Businessman Suleiman Carrim did not appear on 14 August 2026, the date the commission's 29 July ruling ordered him to attend in person, and had not submitted to the independent medical examination that ruling made the only alternative. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga instructed the commission's secretary, Dr Nolitha Vukuza, to lay the charges, and was explicit that the commission would lay them rather than recommend them, leaving any decision to prosecute to the police and the prosecuting authority. He also ruled that Carrim will no longer be required to appear and that findings will be made on the evidence he gave on 9 and 10 March 2026. Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim said the report received two days earlier was 'essentially an opinion by the same treating doctor' and did not address the daily outings; the commission had evidence that a man too unwell to testify had been out at Woolworths and Kauai. His advocate Kameel Premhid argued the referral was unnecessarily punitive. The charge concerns non-compliance with a summons only. It is not a finding on any allegation about the R360 million SAPS health services contract or the funding of a Matlala tender, all of which remain untested; Carrim is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 159
For the first time in its existence the Madlanga Commission resolved to lay criminal charges against a witness. North West businessman Suleiman Carrim, who has avoided giving evidence since March 2026 on grounds of ill health, did not appear on the day the commission had ordered him to attend in person, and had not submitted to the independent medical examination the commission's 29 July ruling made the only alternative to appearing. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga instructed the commission's secretary, Dr Nolitha Vukuza, to lay criminal charges, and was explicit that the commission would lay the charges itself rather than recommend that anyone else do so - what follows is then a matter for the police and the prosecuting authority. He also ruled that Carrim will no longer be required to appear and that the commission will make its findings on the evidence he already gave on 9 and 10 March 2026. Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim set out the commission's attempts to arrange the independent assessment and said the report finally received two days before the hearing was 'essentially an opinion by the same treating doctor' and did not address the daily outings; the commission had been shown that Carrim, said to be too unwell to testify, had been out to Woolworths and Kauai. Madlanga put it to his counsel plainly: 'From where I am sitting, they appear to have been outings even if you say they are not outings.' Carrim's advocate Kameel Premhid argued that a criminal referral was unnecessarily punitive and that a less intrusive course existed - his treating doctor had offered to testify privately and answer the commission's questions on the medical reports. Carrim is the businessman linked in evidence to an R360 million SAPS health services contract and to the co-funding of a police tender awarded to Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. The decision lands with the commission's evidence deadline of 2 October 2026 six weeks away and, on Yusuf Abramjee's public count, roughly 35 working days and scores of witnesses still to come. Nothing here is a finding against Carrim on the underlying allegations, which remain untested; he is presumed innocent.
OpenA father tells the commission he went to court to stop the police killing his son, and they killed him the next day
The Madlanga Commission's KwaZulu-Natal hit-squad phase moved from IPID's statistics to a single case on 13 August 2026. Gregory Loftus, a former police officer and the father of Durban tow-truck operator Bevan Loftus, testified that on 31 March 2023 he deposed to an affidavit supporting an urgent interdict to stop Captain Deena Govender and the SAPS from killing his son, and that 'a day after the application was issued, Captain Deena Govender and a group of SAPS officers under his command murdered my son anyway'. Bevan Loftus and four other people were shot dead in a Morningside flat in what police recorded as a drug raid. His father alleged the killing was carried out at the instance of tow-truck competitor Clive Naicker and that the drug narrative was built after the fact. Retired SAPS captain and firearms expert Ashley Houston, who attended the scene, described the deceased as a notorious gang associate but told the commission the officers' account of the shooting was 'highly improbable', with blood spatter and bullet strikes concentrated low on the walls and on the floor. Every allegation is untested, the officers named have given no evidence in answer, no court has considered any of it, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 158
Witnesses: Gregory Loftus, Ashley Houston. The Madlanga Commission's new KwaZulu-Natal stream moved from the statistics to a single family. The witness was Gregory Loftus, a former police officer and the father of Durban tow-truck operator Bevan Loftus, who was shot dead by a South African Police Service task team on 1 April 2023, led by evidence leader Advocate Sikhakhane SC. Gregory Loftus told the commission that his son 'was murdered by the police under the guise of a legitimate police operation and at the instance of Clive Naicker, a competitor of Bevan in the tow truck industry and alleged drug dealer'. The detail that gives his evidence its force is the paper trail: on 31 March 2023, the day before the shooting, he deposed to an affidavit supporting an urgent interdict application to stop Captain Deena Govender and the SAPS from killing his son, and 'a day after the application was issued, Captain Deena Govender and a group of SAPS officers under his command murdered my son anyway'. Bevan Loftus and four other people died in what police described as a drug raid on a flat in Morningside, Durban. Gregory Loftus rejected the account that his son was a drug dealer or a killer, said he lived modestly off a legitimate towing business, and told the commission the drug narrative was constructed after the fact to justify the shooting; he also described harassment of his son by police that he said began in 2022, and told the commission that five of Bevan's drivers had been shot since 2020. The commission then heard a directly contradictory strand from retired SAPS captain Ashley Houston, a firearms expert who attended the scene, who described Bevan Loftus as a notorious figure associated with the local Hollywood gang - but whose forensic evidence was, if anything, harder on the police account. Houston told the commission the task team's version was 'highly improbable': bullet holes and blood spatter were concentrated low on the walls and on the floor, 'most blood spatters were low on the wall and mostly on the floor', which he said did not fit a standing shootout, and the bodies lined up in the lounge did not match the wound trajectories he would expect from rifle fire in a small flat. The officers' account was that they found a door ajar, that men jumped from a couch, and that a shootout followed in which 27 rounds were fired and five people died. Officers named in the operation include Captain Deena Govender, Captain Pedro Rodrigues, Constable Matthew Halford, Yogandram Megan Munsami, Michael Menzi Shabalala and Metro Police officer Jevon Lee China. On Day 157 IPID's Len John had alleged that Govender received more than R2.7 million connected to the killing of Bevan Loftus and more than R2.5 million from a tow-truck company owner. Every allegation is untested, none of the officers has given evidence in answer, no court has considered any of it, and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenThe commission opens a new phase: alleged police hit squads in KwaZulu-Natal
After a month of evidence about the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, the Madlanga Commission moved on 12 August 2026 to allegations that SAPS task teams in KwaZulu-Natal have been operating as hit squads under the cover of legitimate policing. Commission spokesperson Jeremy Michaels said the alleged squads 'target suspects in cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies, as well as taxi operators and drug syndicates under the guise of a Task Team'. The first witness in the new phase was Len Barnabas John, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate's deputy director for investigations in KwaZulu-Natal, whose evidence draws on IPID's examination of 149 deaths caused by SAPS task teams in the province between April 2023 and 31 May 2026. The commission stressed that it is not itself investigating extrajudicial killings; the evidence goes to criminal infiltration of the police. Every allegation is untested and every officer named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 157
Witness: Len Barnabas John. After a month inside the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, the Madlanga Commission turned to KwaZulu-Natal and to the allegation that police task teams there have been operating as hit squads. The witness was Len Barnabas John, deputy director for investigations at the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in KwaZulu-Natal, and his evidence was drawn from IPID's examination of 149 deaths at the hands of SAPS task teams between April 2023 and 31 May 2026, of which he had focused on 77 cases. He told the commission that in a number of these the police did not act in self-defence: 'we have identified through our investigation that in these killings you will get a shooting where six people are shot and killed - when you do an investigation, you find only two firearms', and, of the pattern as a whole, 'they go out to kill the person; that is why we indicate extrajudicial'. He described three units targeting illicit drugs, cash-in-transit robberies and taxi-industry crime, and told the commission the majority of the shootings of alleged cash-in-transit suspects involved a task team under Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender, with Captain Pedro Rodrigues also named in the command structure. Task team members generally said they had acted on Crime Intelligence information about suspects' whereabouts, but that information was often not verified against other investigations, case dockets or the detectives responsible; suspects were sometimes killed without case numbers against their names, officers sometimes could not identify the people they had shot, and in some incidents residents of hijacked houses occupied by syndicates were killed alongside them. John further alleged that Govender, whose SAPS take-home pay was under R26,000 a month, received suspicious payments of more than R2.5 million from a tow-truck company owner between August 2022 and December 2023, and was paid more than R2.7 million in connection with the killing of alleged drug figure Bevan Loftus. He told the commission the tow-truck industry in the province is deeply entangled with the drug trade - 'we believe that tow trucks are used for transporting drugs; I'm not saying all the trucks, but in many of these cases, the tow truck and drug industries go together' - and that police officers helping tow operators find clients had left the industry open to use by organised crime. Commission spokesperson Jeremy Michaels said the alleged hit squads 'target suspects in cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies, as well as taxi operators and drug syndicates under the guise of a Task Team'. The commission emphasised that it is not itself investigating extrajudicial killings; the evidence goes to criminal infiltration of the police. This entry was written while the day's proceedings were under way. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenParliament publicly contradicts Fadiel Adams's 'frozen laptop' explanation
On the evening of 11 August 2026, hours after National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams told the Madlanga Commission that a ten-month delay in submitting his statement was caused by a parliamentary laptop that persistently froze and had to be returned for repairs repeatedly, Parliament issued a statement contradicting him. Having reviewed its ICT service desk records, the legislature said they 'do not reflect any reported incident of persistent laptop malfunction, hardware failure, repeated freezing of the device, or the laptop being repeatedly submitted to ICT for repairs', with only routine user-access and account-support matters logged for him. Chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga had already called the explanation 'unbelievable', and the delay forced Adams's public testimony to be postponed so the commission could review the statement. Adams's section 27 complaint founded the Crime Intelligence investigation whose charges the NPA provisionally withdrew on 27 July 2026. Nothing here is a finding against him; he is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 156
Witness: Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy. Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy returned to the Madlanga Commission, led by evidence leader Advocate Segeels-Ncube, and named a cabinet minister in the route by which classified intelligence reached the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption. She testified that suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu bypassed the prescribed procedure to get an Inspector-General of Intelligence report on Crime Intelligence officers into IDAC's hands. The IGI had told the directorate in January 2025 that material from its live investigations could not be shared while those investigations were under way; by September 2025 IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal told Ramsamy and colleagues that Mchunu had arranged for someone to fly to him in the Eastern Cape with a hard copy of the report. The report was still classified when it reached Perumal and had not been declassified before he forwarded it to Ramsamy by WhatsApp; Perumal had called it 'golden' because it was believed it would help the case against Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and his senior colleagues. Ramsamy told the commission that specific channels prescribed by the Intelligence Services Oversight Act had to be followed to obtain an IGI report and that they were not, and the commission heard that the National Prosecuting Authority had not authorised the report's use before this inquiry. She also described a tense January 2025 meeting with IGI legal staff at which Perumal became agitated and used what was characterised as 'cowboy tactics', after which IGI advocate Jayashree Govender declined to cooperate. Separately that day, the commission dealt with the ten-month delay in MP Fadiel Adams's statement; Adams attributed it to a parliamentary laptop that persistently froze and needed repeated repairs, chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga called the explanation 'unbelievable', and Parliament issued a statement that evening saying its ICT records reflected no report of persistent malfunction, hardware failure, repeated freezing or repeated submissions for repair. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenKubayi rejects calls to disband IDAC after Madlanga raises the prospect of shutting it down
Following a month of evidence in which the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption's own prosecutors and investigators testified against its former leadership, chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga raised on 7 August 2026 the prospect that the commission could recommend that IDAC be shut down altogether - the first time the option has been named in open session. It followed evidence from IDAC's head of investigations and operations, Matthews Sesoko, that the directorate repeatedly failed to follow its own binding operational rules and has no clearly defined consequences for officials who do not follow due process. Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi publicly rejected calls to disband the directorate, saying: 'We think that these calls are without foundation and cannot be supported.' Her department is instead running the six-month reset announced on 30 July, with skills and lifestyle audits of all 212 IDAC employees due by 14 August 2026. A remark by a chairperson is not a ruling or a recommendation, and nothing here is a finding.
OpenDay 155
Witness: Matthews Sesoko. Matthews Sesoko, head of investigations and operations at the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption and formerly head of investigations at IPID, gave evidence at the Madlanga Commission led by evidence leader Advocate Pooe - and the picture he drew was of an official stripped of authority over the very cases the commission has spent a month examining. Sesoko told the commission he was abducted on 7 November 2025, assaulted and abandoned near Rabie Ridge in Midrand, with his work cellphone and laptop taken, and that he returned to duty on 13 January 2026. On his return his authority had been substantially reduced: chief investigators no longer reported to him but directly to then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson, and his responsibilities were cut back largely to administrative matters such as leave and travel. He said he no longer chairs the directorate's Operations Management Committee - 'a decision was made that the DDPPs would now chair that committee' - and that he was given no reason for the change. Asked why he had not intervened in the Crime Intelligence investigation, he gave his experience at his previous employer, the kidnapping and having been unlawfully charged himself as reasons why he did not 'impose himself' on the docket, and said plainly of the directorate's decision-making: 'To be honest, sometimes the decisions that ID would take, I really wouldn't understand them.' Much of his evidence went to how IDAC selects the cases it takes and declines, and to the directorate's own written procedures - the commission heard that IDAC's investigation manual had been approved rather than left in draft, and that the directorate has no clearly defined consequences for officials who fail to follow due process. On the evidence of that week chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga raised, for the first time, the prospect that the commission could recommend that IDAC be closed down altogether. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDA MP Ian Cameron denies any role in an alleged plot to remove Fannie Masemola
After IDAC state advocate Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy told the Madlanga Commission on 5 August 2026 that a list of investigations allegedly withheld from national commissioner General Fannie Masemola included the protection detail of DA MP Ian Cameron, chair of Parliament's portfolio committee on police, Cameron publicly denied any role in an alleged plot to remove Masemola. Ramsamy's evidence was that then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson instructed her team to keep Masemola ignorant of several matters so that he would give the portfolio committee a false account and could then be charged with perjury. Cameron's name appears in her list of the matters withheld; her evidence does not allege that he authored the plan, and he has rejected any involvement. All of it is untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenParliament suspends Fadiel Adams for 20 days and docks his pay
Two weeks before he gave evidence to the Madlanga Commission, National Coloured Congress leader and MP Fadiel Adams was suspended from Parliament for 20 days and had his salary docked. The Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests found that he had breached Parliament's Code of Ethical Conduct by publishing a Facebook post containing the personal contact details of a Democratic Alliance staff member, and treated it as an aggravating factor that this was his second breach of the Code involving social media. The suspension, imposed under the Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliaments and Provincial Legislatures Act, runs from 3 to 28 August 2026 and barred him from committee proceedings, including Parliament's section 89 committee. It has nothing to do with the commission: the ethics finding concerns his conduct as a member of the House, not the section 27 complaint that founded the Crime Intelligence prosecution. It does mean that when Adams took the stand on 19 August 2026 he did so while suspended from Parliament. The suspension is a disciplinary outcome of the legislature, not a criminal finding, and nothing in it bears on the untested allegations he has made or the untested allegations made about him.
OpenDay 154
Witness: Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy. Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy resumed her part-heard evidence before the Madlanga Commission, led by evidence leader Advocate Segeels-Ncube, and the allegation moved from how the Crime Intelligence suspects were chosen to an alleged plan to manufacture a charge against the national police commissioner. Ramsamy testified about a meeting at which then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson instructed her team not to inform General Fannie Masemola about a set of investigations before he appeared at Parliament's portfolio committee on police: 'Adv Johnson said that the national commissioner should not be informed of the investigation. She said the national commissioner would appear at the portfolio committee on policing soon and we should let him lie at the portfolio committee.' Asked by Commissioner Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC whether that amounted to a set-up for Masemola, she answered, 'Correct.' The intention she described was that if Masemola unknowingly gave a false account to the committee he could then be charged with perjury; the matters allegedly kept from him included the disputed appointment of General Nosipho Madondo, the General Philani Lushaba matter, hotel and related spending, the Political Killings Task Team investigation and the protection detail of DA MP Ian Cameron, who has since publicly denied any role in a plot against Masemola. Ramsamy said of the shape of it: 'It looked and became evident that there was a line of march and that line of march was to get generals Khumalo and Masemola in an accused box.' She also testified that Johnson had given her the information and the names for a section 28(13) application in 2024 and then denied doing so before this commission, that Johnson had 'threw her under the bus', and that IDAC's wellness department had received numerous staff complaints about her treatment of them. She broke down while recounting a 2025 encounter with Johnson and the commission adjourned briefly to let her compose herself. Her evidence also touched the Crime Intelligence forklift investigation under 'Project Diversion', where she said chief investigator Dylan Perumal had told her in January 2025 that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu had arranged for a witness to be flown to the Eastern Cape to consult with him: 'I had assumed that the minister's office had paid for it, because I had later met this witness and he would not have been of financial means to have flown himself.' All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 153
Witness: Advocate Peter Serunye. Advocate Peter Serunye, a Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions at the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption and the senior prosecutor who inherited the Crime Intelligence case, told the Madlanga Commission the case never made sense to him. Led by evidence leader Advocate Pooe, Serunye testified that the arrest of Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and six co-accused was premature - that they were brought to court before the investigation was complete and before critical evidence had been gathered, and that investigators had 'proceeded on allegations rather than evidence'. On the corruption count in particular he said the theory collapsed at the first question: 'it was not apparent what she could offer the generals in return, nor what unlawful act she was to perform', a reference to Brigadier Dineo Mokwele, whose appointment founded the charge. He described discovering at a June 2025 court appearance that junior state advocate Joy Hlatshwayo was handling the bail hearing alone with only investigating officer Brian Padayachee, that the J15 administrative form was incomplete and that no bail affidavit existed, and said he intervened with fellow DDPP Sibusiso Tshikovhi. After taking over the prosecution on 8 August 2025 he repeatedly asked for MP Fadiel Adams's section 27 referral - the founding complaint - and was refused it; at a meeting on 1 September 2025 then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson asked why he would not simply accept the investigators' assurances and urged that the prosecution proceed. He emailed Johnson warning that there was at most a prima facie case of fraud and no case of corruption on the available evidence. Serunye said the evidence that has since emerged had fundamentally changed his understanding of the matter and left him convinced that he and Hlatshwayo had been drawn into an investigation they should never have been part of - that he believed he had been 'set up'. The National Prosecuting Authority provisionally withdrew all the charges on 27 July 2026. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenCommission says it is prepared to arrange protection for IDAC prosecutor Drushantha Ramsamy
Two days after Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy played the Madlanga Commission a recording in which her then head, Advocate Andrea Johnson, allegedly told her to leave the country rather than testify, the commission indicated on 1 August 2026 that it was prepared to provide protection for her. Ramsamy had told the commission she expected to be 'very badly victimised' when she returned to the office for contradicting Johnson's evidence. Witness protection is a precaution the commission has extended before in this inquiry, and it is not a finding about any risk or about anyone's conduct. The allegations she has made remain untested and everyone she names is presumed innocent.
OpenEvidence leaders to serve Andrea Johnson with a Rule 3 notice so she can answer the new allegations
With Advocate Andrea Johnson's six days of evidence closed on 29 July and fresh allegations aired against her the following day, the Madlanga Commission's evidence leaders indicated they would issue her a Rule 3 notice - the mechanism under the commission's rules by which a person implicated in evidence is formally told what has been said about them and given the opportunity to respond. It sets up her recall to answer the recorded 26 July telephone call played on Day 151, the allegation that she drove an investigation called 'Project Diversion' against national commissioner General Fannie Masemola and Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo, and the account of a suspect list handed over on 5 December 2024. A Rule 3 notice is a procedural protection, not an accusation or a finding. The allegations are untested and Johnson is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 152
Witness: Mantsha Robert Raphesu. The witness was Investigating Directorate Against Corruption investigator Mantsha Robert Raphesu, led by evidence leader Advocate Pooe - the second of the directorate's own officials in two days to give evidence against its former leadership, and the man whose recorded voice note had been played to the commission on Day 148 disputing the 'A1' statement. Raphesu told the commission he intends to open a criminal case against two of his own colleagues, IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal and senior investigator Brian Padayachee, alleging they targeted him after he objected to how the Crime Intelligence investigation was being run, and he asked the commission to intervene because he feared a complaint lodged through the normal channels could 'end up in the wrong hands'. He said that although he was the lead investigator on the Brigadier Dineo Mokwele matter, 'members of the team consulted witnesses in that matter without informing me and without my involvement', that he was removed from key investigations, subjected to disciplinary action and later barred from working on cases involving police officers and the security cluster. He produced a disciplinary letter dated 7 February 2025 from the office of then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson accusing him of leaking confidential information, denied it, and volunteered to submit his cellphone for forensic examination and to take a polygraph test. He further testified that Johnson had put a false version of MP Fadiel Adams's section 27 referral before Parliament's ad hoc committee on police corruption, omitting the allegations that the Political Killings Task Team had misused Crime Intelligence's secret services account, and that state advocate Drushantha Ramsamy had told the investigating team she was under instruction not to give them documents. The week had already produced the sequence the commission is now working through in order: Johnson concluded six days of evidence on Day 150, Ramsamy testified against her on Day 151 and played a recorded call in which Johnson allegedly told her to leave the country rather than testify, and by Thursday evening the Justice Minister and the National Director of Public Prosecutions had suspended Perumal, Padayachee and investigator Suneel Bellochun and placed the whole directorate under a six-month reset. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenThree City of Ekurhuleni heads of department dismissed, two of them implicated at the commission
The City of Ekurhuleni dismissed three senior officials on 30 July 2026 over fraud and corruption allegations. Two of them - head of legal services Kemi Behari and head of human resources Linda Gxasheka - had been implicated in evidence before the Madlanga Commission, where it was alleged they shielded Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department chief Julius Mkhwanazi from disciplinary action by attempting to suppress an Independent Police Investigative Directorate report that found he had entered the EMPD into contracts with Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala. Both had been suspended in February 2026 and were later arrested and charged with corruption alongside Mkhwanazi and former city manager Imogen Mashazi in an operation run by the task team set up on the commission's recommendations. The third dismissal, of head of HR services Moloko Monyepao, concerned alleged negligence linked to a revenue loss and is not a commission matter. A dismissal is an employment outcome, not a criminal finding; the criminal charges remain untested and all named are presumed innocent.
OpenKubayi and Mothibi suspend three senior IDAC investigators and put the directorate under a six-month reset
On 30 July 2026, hours after an IDAC state advocate testified against the directorate's former head, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi suspended IDAC chief investigator Dylan Perumal, and National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Andy Mothibi suspended senior investigator Brian Padayachee - who led the Crime Intelligence case and defended it at the commission across Days 139-141 - and investigator Suneel Bellochun. All three suspensions are precautionary and pending disciplinary processes; reporting recorded that the three had been accused before the commission of manipulating cases, including the fabrication of witness statements. Kubayi and Mothibi simultaneously gave the directorate six months to reform, with skills and lifestyle audits of all 212 IDAC employees due by 14 August 2026, a review of IDAC cases currently before the courts and a review of its standard operating procedures. Kubayi described it as 'a comprehensive reset of IDAC aimed at rebranding and repositioning the directorate'. A suspension is an employment step, not a finding of wrongdoing; none of the three has yet answered from the stand and all are presumed innocent.
OpenDay 151
Witness: Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy. The Madlanga Commission heard from Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy, a state advocate inside the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption and, until this week, one of Andrea Johnson's own prosecutors - and the case against the case turned into a case against the leadership. The centrepiece was a recording Ramsamy made of a telephone call with Johnson on 26 July, the day Johnson wrote to the National Director of Public Prosecutions asking to be released. Played in open session, it captured Johnson saying of the commission, 'It's going to be a shitshow', dismissing a legal point with 'this is Basic Law 101, I'm surprised you don't know it', and - on what Ramsamy should do if the commission summoned her - 'if they call you, leave the country'. Ramsamy testified that Johnson had been nicknamed 'Flip-Flop, Knee-Jerk' by IDAC staff because her instructions changed through the day after she consulted chief investigator Dylan Perumal, and that Johnson personally drove an investigation staff called 'Project Diversion' which targeted national commissioner General Fannie Masemola and Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo - an 'orchestrated attack', in Ramsamy's words, on the two police leaders. She said Johnson handed her a list of suspects written on a pinkish-purple sheet on 5 December 2024 with the words 'these are the suspects, Chief and I discussed who is to be included', and that when she later saw a document before the commission that differed from the section 27 affidavit Johnson had given her that same day, 'my heart dropped to my stomach'. She told the commission it was easy inside IDAC to manipulate statements and to decide who the suspects would be, how an investigation would run and what the witnesses would say. Away from the chamber the consequences landed the same day: Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi suspended Perumal, and NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi suspended senior investigator Brian Padayachee and investigator Suneel Bellochun, all pending disciplinary processes; Kubayi and Mothibi gave IDAC six months to reform, with skills and lifestyle audits of all 212 employees due by 14 August. Ramsamy's evidence was part-heard and she was set down to resume the following Tuesday. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenIDAC investigator Suneel Bellochun served with a notice of intended suspension over three complaints
Evidence at the commission on 29 July 2026 disclosed that senior Investigating Directorate Against Corruption investigator Suneel Bellochun had been served with a notice of intention to suspend him, arising from three separate complaints: one raised before Parliament's ad hoc committee in September 2025; allegations aired through a protected Political Killings Task Team witness known to the commission as Witness N, that Bellochun had extorted money from undocumented traders by exploiting their fear of deportation; and a complaint that he attempted to question a jailed officer without legal representation present in order to secure the implication of senior officials in the Medicare24 matter. A notice of intended suspension is a precautionary employment step and not a finding; the following day the notice became an actual suspension alongside two IDAC colleagues. All the allegations are untested and Bellochun is presumed innocent.
OpenMadlanga refuses Suleiman Carrim's fifth postponement bid and orders him back on 14 August
On 29 July 2026 chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga handed down the ruling reserved on Day 147 and refused North West businessman Suleiman Carrim's application to postpone his part-heard evidence indefinitely, directing him to appear in person on 14 August 2026. Madlanga allowed one exception: 'Mr Carrim will be excused from appearing on the 14th of August 2026 only if he has voluntarily subjected himself to an independent evaluation by a medical specialist' - a specialist nominated not by Carrim's own doctors but by the chairperson of the association of medical professionals in the field in which his doctor practises, with the appointment agreed and the examination completed by 3 August 2026. It was his fifth postponement application since an April health scare, and the first the commission refused outright. The evidence leaders had put to the commission that cellphone geolocation showed Carrim leaving his facility almost daily for eight hours or more. Nothing here is a finding; the allegations concerning Carrim are untested and he is presumed innocent.
OpenCommission - Suliman Carrim ruling (postponement application)
An official ruling added to the Madlanga Commission record.
OpenDay 150
Witness: Advocate Andrea Johnson. Advocate Andrea Johnson concluded a sixth and final day in the Madlanga Commission's hot seat, and the day ended where the commission had been circling since her first appearance: her relationship with suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan. Commissioners put to her a set of WhatsApp exchanges submitted in evidence in which Khan greeted her as 'Hi gorgeous' and 'you gorgeous', the two spoke of missing one another, arranged dinners and discussed her visiting his home - messages the commission said showed a far closer and longer-running association than the 'very affable' acquaintance she had described on Day 144, when she said she had met him around a fiftieth birthday and had not been in contact for some eighteen months. Johnson accepted the relationship was 'very deep' and personal. The same day, chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga handed down the ruling he had reserved on Day 147: North West businessman Suleiman Carrim's application to postpone his part-heard evidence indefinitely was refused, and Carrim was directed to appear in person on 14 August 2026. Madlanga made one exception - 'Mr Carrim will be excused from appearing on the 14th of August 2026 only if he has voluntarily subjected himself to an independent evaluation by a medical specialist' - with the specialist to be nominated by the chairperson of the professional association in the relevant field of medicine and the examination agreed and completed by 3 August. It was Carrim's fifth postponement bid and the first the commission refused outright. Johnson's evidence also disclosed that senior IDAC investigator Suneel Bellochun had been served with a notice of intended suspension, following three separate complaints laid against him, among them allegations aired through a protected Political Killings Task Team witness known as Witness N that he had extorted money from undocumented traders. On the evidence that had emerged during her testimony, the commission's evidence leaders signalled that Johnson would be recalled to answer new allegations. All allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenMokwele's lawyers reject the 'provisional' withdrawal and weigh a permanent stay of prosecution
A day after the National Prosecuting Authority provisionally withdrew the Crime Intelligence corruption case, lawyers for Brigadier Dineo Mokwele said they were unhappy that the withdrawal had been framed as provisional - which leaves the file open rather than closing it - and were considering advising her to reject it and to seek a permanent stay of prosecution instead. Their objection is to the NDPP's position that the investigation remains incomplete, more than a year after she was arrested and charged. Nothing here is a finding; the allegations against Mokwele were never tested and she is presumed innocent.
OpenDay 149
Witness: Advocate Andrea Johnson. Advocate Andrea Johnson returned to the Madlanga Commission for a fifth day - her first as the former head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, a day after her resignation took effect - and faced questions about whether the directorate had prosecuted selectively. Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC asked why IDAC had not pursued allegations that Crime Intelligence funds were diverted to former police minister Bheki Cele, a matter she put squarely within the directorate's mandate; Johnson answered that she had received no briefing on it, and Baloyi replied that, 'on the extreme end, it speaks to selective investigations and prosecutions if this was overlooked'. Johnson undertook to check whether her former team had ever pursued the allegations. On the previous day's evidence that a statement attributed to MP Fadiel Adams had been fabricated, she said she had no knowledge of it and that no one had ever raised it with her, while accepting the chronology was implausible and deferring the detail to the investigators. She also struggled to account for IDAC's investigation into the Political Killings Task Team: she said she had no recall of ordering it and had only recently learned it existed, despite having signed a summons for task-team records and an April 2025 prosecution memorandum authorising it, and despite telling Parliament's ad hoc committee that IDAC was not investigating the task team; evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello SC pressed her, and Johnson said the memorandum 'related to the promotions, and that was all it related to'. The day's evidence further covered fraud and corruption charges arising from a Crime Intelligence forklift worth close to R1 million for which a supplier was paid but which was never delivered - a matter Johnson accepted looked more like a breach of contract than a crime. Her testimony was continuing when this entry was written; all allegations are untested and everyone named is presumed innocent.
OpenMadlanga Commission to lay criminal charges over the leaking of an anonymous witness's identity
Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga announced on 27 July 2026 that someone had disclosed the identity of a witness who testified anonymously before the commission, and that on the face of it the disclosure was deliberate. The commission, he said, would institute criminal proceedings against that person in terms of the Commissions Act and the commission's own regulations: 'this is a matter the commission takes very seriously and it simply must act in these circumstances.' He did not name the person responsible or the witness concerned, and this archive does not either - several witnesses in this inquiry have testified under protection after describing surveillance and threats.
OpenRamaphosa accepts Andrea Johnson's resignation as IDAC head with immediate effect - she testifies the same day
Advocate Andrea Johnson wrote to the National Director of Public Prosecutions on Sunday 26 July 2026 asking to be released from her post as head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption within 24 hours, waiving her three-month notice period and citing what she described as unprecedented attacks on her personally and professionally over five months, much of it arising from IDAC's cases against Crime Intelligence officials. On Monday 27 July, on a recommendation from Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi supported by NDPP Advocate Andy Mothibi, President Cyril Ramaphosa accepted the resignation with immediate effect under section 12(8)(a) of the NPA Act. She testified at the Madlanga Commission the same day, and returned the next as IDAC's former head. Her resignation follows four days in the witness box in which she conceded errors of mandate and process in the Crime Intelligence prosecutions.
OpenNPA provisionally withdraws the Crime Intelligence corruption case against Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo and his co-accused
On 27 July 2026 the National Prosecuting Authority confirmed that National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Andy Mothibi had completed a review and signed a provisional withdrawal, before plea, of the fraud and corruption case arising from the appointment of Brigadier Dineo Mokwele - the case for which Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and other senior officers were arrested in June 2025. The reported grounds were the Madlanga Commission's evidence that Mokwele did hold the qualifications and experience for the post, contradicting IDAC's characterisation of her as unqualified, and the contradictions aired at the commission over how the complainant MP's statements were obtained. NPA spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said that 'for now, with the facts before him, the NDPP decided to withdraw the matter after the review process', and that it still had to be formally withdrawn in court. Mothibi's letter recorded that the matter may not be re-enrolled, nor any fresh prosecution decision taken, without his express written approval. A provisional withdrawal is not an acquittal and not a finding; all named are presumed innocent.
Open
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