Witness
Senior investigator, Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) · Pretoria
Testified · IDAC investigator
The senior Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) investigator who led the directorate's fraud and corruption case against suspended SAPS Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo and others over the allegedly irregular appointment of Brigadier Dineo Mokwele. He gave evidence at the Madlanga Commission across three days (14, 15 and 16 July 2026, Days 139-141), defending the investigation as backed by strong evidence and denying that IDAC was being weaponised in police infighting - but he faced sustained scepticism from the panel over whether the directorate had any lawful basis for the case. He is an investigator giving evidence, not an accused before the commission.
This profile summarises testimony and evidence given on the public record before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry. It restates allegations as presented at the hearings and is not a finding of guilt, liability, or wrongdoing by any person.
Their role
Padayachee told the commission that IDAC 'has sufficient evidence to sustain the charges in the criminal case against Khumalo and other officials at Crime Intelligence', rejecting suggestions that the investigation was politically driven or that the directorate lacked grounds to proceed. The charges are untested; Khumalo is presumed innocent.
Answering MK Party MP Vusi Shongwe's claim of an 'Indian cabal' said to link IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson, senior investigator Suneel Bellochun, suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan and himself, Padayachee said: 'If such a cabal exists, I am not a party to it. I have never investigated such because I don't know of it and neither am I involved in it.' He confirmed he knew Khan from earlier work together in Crime Intelligence.
Padayachee testified that KwaZulu-Natal commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi - who has publicly criticised the IDAC probe - had in their interactions before the arrest shown no issue with the case against Khumalo and other Crime Intelligence officers, had filed an affidavit, and was aware the arrests were coming, saying they 'must face their own situations'.
Under cross-examination he accepted he did not have complainant MP Fadiel Adams's original signed affidavit when the investigation commenced, relying on an oral briefing and receiving the sworn statement later - which chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga called 'highly improbable' for a case against top police officials.
Padayachee struggled to explain IDAC's mandate to second-guess a SAPS appointment. Madlanga called the directorate's theory a 'quantum leap in logic'; Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC framed the founding complaint as a human-resources dispute with no allegation of corruption; and the record showed Brigadier Mokwele was charged over conduct investigators believed she might commit in future.
On the stand
Connections
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