After his extraordinary, bare-all press conference on July 6, KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has mostly kept shtum about the explosive allegations he made that day.
But what he said was a mouthful, implicating MPs, SAPS officials, Gauteng metro police, prosecutors, the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac), correctional services and the judiciary in colluding with a Gauteng-based criminal syndicate.
The allegations led President Cyril Ramaphosa to establish a judicial commission of inquiry, chaired by retired Constitutional Court justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, to investigate the allegations. The commission was assigned to look into “criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system arising from the specific allegations” made by Mkhwanazi. This week it announced that its public hearings, due to start on September 1, had been delayed because of procurement challenges.
Its regulations prohibit those involved with the commission from communicating “any information” related to the inquiry. But there has, in the meantime, been litigation which, though not asking the same questions as the commission, has covered a small portion of the same ground.
The MK Party and former president Jacob Zuma went to court over the president’s decision to establish the commission and to place police minister Senzo Mchunu on “leave of absence”. Then deputy national police commissioner Shadrack Sibiya challenged as unlawful the instruction from national police commissioner Fannie Masemola for him to “stay at home”.
The litigation has meant that Mchunu and Sibiya have addressed some of Mkhwanazi's allegations. In turn, Masemola has responded to Sibiya. The court papers are not a full picture, which must await the commission. In particular, Mkhwanazi was not a party to any of the litigation and would not have been in a position to respond. But here is some of what we know so far:
On why Mchunu shut down the political killings task team
Mkhwanazi said at his press conference that the decision to disband the task team on December 31 was the result of a request for assistance from the Gauteng organised crime investigations unit, which was probing the April 2024 murder of Armand Swart, a Transnet employee.
Mkhwanazi detailed a “sequence of events” linking Mchunu to North West businessman Brown Mogotsi, whom he called Mchunu’s associate. He linked Mogotsi to Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala, who was arrested in May for the attempted murder of his former lover, Tebogo Thobejane. Matlala had, in 2024, been awarded a police contract worth more than R360m. The contract was later cancelled.
He said the investigation into Swart’s murder led to the arrest of Sandton businessman Katiso Molefe and a ballistics test result on December 30 — the day before Mchunu disbanded the unit — linked firearms and cellphones seized during arrests for Swart’s murder to several other high-profile murders. Mkhwanazi did not specify the link between the Swart/Molefe investigation and the Thobejane/Matlala investigation, but it has been reported that two of the co-accused in both cases are “alleged guns for hire” Tiego Floyd Mabusela and Musa Kekana.
Mkhwanazi quoted text messages between Mogotsi and Matlala from January 1 — the day after Mchunu gave the disbandment instruction — in which he said Mogotsi told Matlala that he had arranged a meeting with the minister and Sibiya, and, later, that the task team had been dissolved.
In court papers to the ConCourt, Mchunu said his decision to disband the task team would be fully interrogated by the commission. But the MK Party had claimed he “unilaterally” disbanded it and he specifically denied this, saying he had informed Masemola that, “after some consideration”, the task team was no longer required nor adding any value to policing and instructed him to disband the task team.
In Sibiya’s court papers to the high court, there was more. Sibiya said that in October 2024 the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Prof Mary de Haas sent a complaint to the then-minister of police that the task team was abusive and was a “gross wastage of personnel and financial resources”. She called for its immediate disbandment. De Haas’s complaint is attached to the court papers. It made several allegations, including that the task team routinely used torture.
Sibiya added that he considered the disbandment order to be lawful as there were “numerous complaints” against the task team and some of its members were under investigation for serious allegations of criminal conduct. The task team operated “in a silo”, it had not finalised cases from as far back as 2016 and some of its cases were last investigated in 2019. It also had a budget assigned to it, “yet only had approximately 612 cases assigned to them over the past seven years”, he said.
On the withdrawal of dockets by Sibiya
Mkhwanazi said at his press briefing that 121 case dockets that were under investigation were taken away from the task team by Sibiya in March. “This was done without the authority of the national commissioner,” he said. “These case dockets have ... been sitting at the head office ever since without any investigation work done on them.”
However, in Sibiya’s court papers, he said he was acting under orders. The instructions on the task team were issued by the minister to the national commissioner, who “in turn conveyed the instruction, inter alia, to me”. He said that on January 3, he received an e-mail from a Brig Lethoko of the office of the national commissioner requesting him to “communicate the deactivation to the relevant team” and to “submit a close-up report ... for NatCom’s consideration”.
A fierce dispute in the court papers in Sibiya ’s case, to be heard in the Pretoria high court on September 3, is about whether Masemola agreed to Sibiya’s plan for the shutdown of the task team. Masemola said he refused to sign it as he wanted a “phased-out” approach. He said Sibiya’s letters, instructing that dockets should be withdrawn to head office, was “contrary to my direct instructions” and was never part of the plan. Sibiya said Masemola’s version was “untrue” and that he was acting under Masemola’s orders.
On how Mchunu knows Mogotsi
In his press briefing, Mkhwanazi said Mchunu had “denied on record” that he knew Mogotsi: “He said that in parliament.” But, said Mkhwanazi, Mchunu had also told someone in a phone conversation, posted on X, that “this was his comrade from North West”.
Had there been a direct question from any member [of parliament] asking me whether I knew Mr Brown Mogotsi, I would have answered in the affirmative. This is owing to having interacted with Mr Mogotsi since 2017, in the presence of other comrades
— Senzo Mchunu
In his papers to the ConCourt, Mchunu said he had issued a media statement after Mkhwanazi’s press conference explaining that he did not know Matlala at all and that Mogotsi was only known to him as a fellow “comrade”. He was not “an associate”.
Attached to his court papers was an affidavit to parliament, explaining that he had not misled MPs. In that explanation, he transcribed the full answer of what he had originally told parliament. He explained that his answer to MPs was in four parts: first, he referred to one person, who was “somebody going around saying that he works with me, wherever I am”.
He then referred to another person, who was claiming to be his younger brother, yet his younger brother had passed away. He then warned MPs of the importance of being “circumspect” about people claiming to be one’s associates. Finally, there was a third person, who was Mogotsi.
About Mogotsi, all he said was: “I am no associate to the person that Gen Mkhwanazi is referring to.
“Had there been a direct question from any member [of parliament] asking me whether I knew Mr Brown Mogotsi, I would have answered in the affirmative. This is owing to having interacted with Mr Mogotsi since 2017, in the presence of other comrades.”
On whether Sibiya knows Matlala
Sibiya was also alleged, in the notification that he was facing an investigation, to have a dishonest “association” with “a person or persons being investigated by the SAPS, namely Vusimusi Matlala and others”. Sibiya said the claim “and that [it] necessarily means I am of dubious character, smacks of dishonesty, is false, irrational and wholly unsubstantiated”. There was no evidence of such association “as none exists”, he said.
Masemola denied the allegation was false and irrational. The investigation into Sibiya’s association with Matlala was “of a sensitive nature” and ongoing, he said, and so he would not say more.
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