ON Tuesday, a guarded voice relayed over an audio link – disguised to spare its owner’s life – walked the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry through the anatomy of a betrayal: how a love affair with a senior Ekurhuleni police officer curdled into a staged “police operation” that stripped a Johannesburg gem owner of stones valued at nearly R15-million, sold for a fraction of that sum and carved into five identical slices of cash.
The witness, protected behind the pseudonym Witness K, is an inspector in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department’s VIP protection unit. She is also, by her own admission, the woman who once loved suspended Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD) deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi – and the one who has now turned on him before the country’s most consequential corruption inquiry.
“I have come forward because I want to acknowledge my role in what happened,” Witness K told the commission, after successfully applying to testify in camera on safety grounds. Commission chairperson, retired Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, granted her protection, ruling that her evidence would nonetheless be broadcast publicly by audio, with her identity shielded.
Witness K told evidence leaders she began a romantic relationship with Mkhwanazi in 2022, while he held a senior post at the EMPD. Within two months, she said, he was a constant borrower – money for groceries, for legal costs tied to a disciplinary matter, for his children’s school fees – with promises to repay that never materialised. When her own savings ran dry, she said, Mkhwanazi told her to “keep her ear to the ground” for opportunities that could generate cash.
It was in answer to that instruction that Witness K recalled a tip she had received months earlier from an informant identified to the commission only as Simon: a man in a block of flats in Killarney, Johannesburg, was sitting on a stash of unlicensed precious stones – sugilite, a violet semi-precious gem the commission heard Mkhwanazi himself later misidentified, in his own evidence, as “lithium.” By Witness K’s account, Mkhwanazi grew increasingly persistent through January and February 2023 about getting hold of the informant again, until she re-established contact and a plan to relieve the stones’ owner of his property – dressed up as a lawful seizure – was set in motion.
NANDO’S, A CREW, AND A ‘LAWFUL’ ROBBERY
On the morning of 11 February 2023, while off duty, Witness K met Mkhwanazi at a Nando’s outlet on the R59 in Randhart. There, she said, he introduced her to two uniformed EMPD officers, Kesha Leigh Stols and Norman Mackenzie, and to a civilian, Andy van der Walt. “Each of us had our roles to play,” she testified. Hers was to manage the informant and the payment; Mkhwanazi’s was to supply the officers who would do the taking.
The group then split up. Stols, Mackenzie and Van der Walt drove to the Killarney flat; Witness K went home; Mkhwanazi’s own movements after the meeting, she said, she did not know. An hour later, Stols phoned her from inside the apartment and put the stones’ owner on the line. Witness K asked him – already certain of the answer – whether he held a permit to possess the stones. He admitted he did not. On the strength of that admission, the trio confiscated the gems.
What followed was not a docket opened, an exhibit logged, or an arrest made. It was a sale. The informant’s contact first offered R100,000, then balked, complaining the stones looked fake. A day later, on 12 February 2023, he handed Witness K R110,000 in cash. She met Mkhwanazi at a car wash, summoned Stols to join them, and split the proceeds: R88,000 between Mkhwanazi, Stols, Mackenzie and Van der Walt, and R22,000 – an equal fifth share – kept for herself.
Two months on, the owner reported the theft to the Independent Police Investigations Directorate (IPID), putting the value of what had been taken from him at R14,926,412. To date, the commission has heard that stones worth only about R40,000 have been recovered. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate is investigating.
The exchange that followed with Commissioner Sandile Khumalo left little room for euphemism. Pressed on whether her only interest had been to rob someone, sell the stones and pocket the cash, Witness K did not equivocate. “It’s true, commissioner,” she said.
MKHWANAZI’S DEFENCE ALREADY IN TATTERS
Witness K’s account lands on top of, rather than instead of, Mkhwanazi’s own version. When he testified earlier this year, he insisted the Killarney operation was a lawful, joint undertaking between the EMPD and the JMPD, and that the seized stones had simply been handed over to Johannesburg’s metro police. Under sustained cross-examination, however, he conceded there was no memorandum of understanding, no paperwork and no documentary trail to support the claim of a joint operation. He admitted his own vehicle was captured on CCTV outside the Killarney flat, but denied stepping out of it or taking any direct part. Investigators from IPID have told the commission the footage does not clearly identify any JMPD officers at the scene – the supposed partners in Mkhwanazi’s “joint operation.”
None of the allegations against Mkhwanazi, Stols, Mackenzie, or Van der Walt has been tested in a court of law, and all are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
A PATTERN, NOT AN INCIDENT
What makes the gemstones case land so hard is how neatly it fits a pattern the Madlanga Commission has spent months excavating. Mkhwanazi has already been arrested on charges of fraud, corruption and defeating the ends of justice over a separate scandal and granted bail. He has admitted accepting money referenced to attempted-murder-accused tenderpreneur Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala – R20,000 in May 2022 and R30,000 that December, paid from the accounts of Matlala’s Cat VIP and Cat Protection and Security entities. He signed memoranda of understanding allowing both Matlala’s CAT VIP and Medicare24, the company run by Matlala associate Mike van Wyk, to fit blue and red emergency lights to private vehicles and carry EMPD-style “appointment cards” – privileges the commission heard were secured, in part, with the help of a video in which Van Wyk is seen fanning a wad of cash while asking Mkhwanazi, plaintively, where their arrangement was headed.
Taken together with the precious-stones testimony, the picture that emerges is of an officer who turned every relationship within reach – a girlfriend, his subordinates, a tenderpreneur’s cash, a healthcare boss’s favours – into a cash withdrawal point. The commission is separately scrutinising WhatsApp exchanges between Van Wyk and Matlala that evidence leaders say point to a cocaine transaction, after Matlala sent Van Wyk a video of brick-shaped packages with the message “get me a good price,” and Van Wyk replied, fixing a figure. Van Wyk was due to answer for that exchange and for his dealings with Mkhwanazi on Monday, but was admitted for psychiatric care after suffering panic attacks; Justice Madlanga has given him until 6 July to file a supplementary affidavit.
Mkhwanazi is expected to be recalled to the stand on Wednesday to answer both Witness K’s testimony and the outstanding questions over the money trail linking him to Van Wyk and Matlala.
