A sworn account now before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry has placed uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) Member of Parliament Vusi Shongwe at the centre of one of the most startling sub-plots yet to emerge from South Africa’s sprawling probe into criminality and political interference within the criminal justice system: an alleged attempt by intermediaries linked to suspended Crime Intelligence boss Major-General Feroz Khan to buy his silence in cash, in kind, and through a state security tender – brokered, on his telling, in the orbit of former president Jacob Zuma’s office in Durban.
Shongwe, who is a member of Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee probing the very allegations General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi first raised in his explosive 6 July 2025 media briefing, has submitted a detailed written response to a Regulation 10(6) notice from the Commission, setting out what he says transpired when he was summoned to a meeting at the DRK Tactical premises in Durban on 8 March 2026.
Khan, the suspended Crime Intelligence deputy head who was due to take the stand at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry this Wednesday, 1 July, was instead fighting for his life in Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital this week after being shot by two unidentified gunmen in a white Mercedes-Benz outside his Houghton home on Sunday night. The attack, in which Khan is understood to have sustained gunshot wounds to the lower body and undergone emergency surgery, has thrown the Commission’s programme into disarray and cast a new and far darker light on a sworn account already before the Commission: an MP’s claim that men acting in Khan’s name once tried to buy his silence with cash, a state tender and compromising material on the very police general whose allegations triggered the inquiry.
Police have urged caution against linking the shooting to Khan’s scheduled testimony, with national spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe describing such speculation as “premature and irresponsible” while confirming that the Hawks, Crime Intelligence and the Political Killings Task Team have all been mobilised to investigate. Khan’s legal representative, Advocate Zubair Khan, struck a starkly different note, telling reporters his client had intended to use Wednesday’s appearance to “fully lay bare the involvement of senior members of SAPS in certain offences,” and suggesting the attack forms part of a broader campaign to discredit him. The Commission says it is now consulting Khan’s lawyers on whether and when his testimony can proceed.
According to Shongwe’s account, the chain of events began with a call from Londiwe – identified as a personal assistant in former president Zuma’s office – informing him that Zuma wished to see him. On arrival in Durban, Shongwe says he learned that two men were waiting, having specifically asked to meet with him rather than the former president. Escorted onto the DRK Tactical premises and into a boardroom, he was met first by a man who introduced himself as Imran, and shortly afterwards by a second man, Yusuf Kajee.
What Shongwe expected to be a courtesy meeting, he says, turned within minutes into something else entirely. Kajee, he recounts, insisted on placing a video call to a man identified only as “General Khan” – a call Shongwe says he initially refused to take before the phone, already ringing, was held up in front of him.
“You Are Suffocating Me” – the Alleged Video Call
Shongwe’s submission describes an emotional appeal from the man on the line, who greeted him as “brother” and asked what he had done to provoke him, saying he felt “suffocated” by Shongwe’s line of questioning – a reference, the MP says, to his work on the parliamentary committee scrutinising allegations against Khan, including the unaccounted-for portion of a 2021 Aeroton cocaine seizure, an alleged cover-up linked to the murder of a make-up artist and of a medical doctor, and allegations of interference in cigarette-smuggling cases.
The man on the call, Shongwe says, then proposed a meeting at his apartment in Sandton the following Friday and said: “We can look after you.” According to the submission, it was after this call ended that Kajee allegedly escalated the offer directly – first dangling a security tender at a major retail chain said to be worth R2 million a month, and, when that was rebuffed, offering to arrange R10 million in cash, which he allegedly called “10 bar.”
Shongwe says he declined both offers. He further alleges that Kajee dangled a third inducement – compromising material on Mkhwanazi, including information relating to a helicopter, which a third man summoned down from an upstairs office allegedly confirmed he could retrieve. As he left the premises, Shongwe says, Imran told him: “I don’t have anything now, but I will give you your chocolates on Friday when we meet” – a remark Shongwe’s submission leaves to the Commission to interpret.
Shongwe says he briefed Zuma and Duduzani Zuma the following day, and that the former president expressed surprise at the real purpose of the meeting, saying he had only been told the men wished to commend the Ad Hoc Committee’s work. Shongwe also discloses that he deliberately left his phone in the car throughout the Durban meeting, citing fears it could be compromised, and that he refused repeated requests from Kajee for his contact details. He says no follow-up contact occurred, since the men had no way of reaching him, and that the promised Friday meeting at the Sandton apartment never took place on his end.
The allegations land at a combustible moment for the Commission. Khan, arrested in May alongside Hawks Gauteng head Major-General Ebrahim Kadwa on charges including defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Precious Metals Act, has been ordered to testify this week after withdrawing High Court bids to block the Commission and police from accessing devices seized from his Houghton apartment. Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo has already told the Commission of Khan’s alleged closeness to North West-based fixer Brown Mogotsi and to suspected cartel figure Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, while Khan has separately warned that data on his seized devices, if mishandled, could endanger lives.
Shongwe’s account also lands awkwardly for the MK Party, which has publicly dismissed the Madlanga Commission as a “spectacle,” even as one of its own MPs now positions himself as a central witness describing an alleged attempt to compromise a sitting parliamentarian through networks operating, by his own telling, in proximity to the party’s founding figure.
For a Commission already credited with prompting the arrests of more than a dozen senior SAPS officials, including National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola, Shongwe’s testimony threatens to widen the inquiry’s reach beyond police corruption into the murkier terrain of attempted political capture – should it withstand the cross-examination that now awaits him, and Khan, in the witness box.
