IT has become a grim, almost daily ritual: a senior police officer, a metro official or a well-connected businessman is named, suspended, arrested or fired, and South Africa’s roll call of the disgraced grows a little longer. Nine months into its work, the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference, and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System — chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga and popularly known simply as the Madlanga Commission – has done what countless commissions before it failed to do: it has produced consequences while it is still sitting.
What began in July 2025 as a response to explosive allegations by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, of collusion between politicians, police generals, prosecutors and organised crime, has metastasised into the most consequential accountability exercise South Africa’s criminal justice system has seen in a generation. Crucially, the commission’s terms of reference allow it to refer evidence for immediate criminal investigation and prosecution as hearings unfold, rather than waiting for a final report. That single provision has given it teeth – and turned its hearing room at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria into an unlikely production line for arrest warrants, disciplinary charge sheets and precautionary suspensions.
“A real rogues’ gallery of the people we entrusted with our safety and security.”
The line, from a Daily Maverick reader responding to the publication’s own tally of Madlanga-related arrests, captures something of the public mood: equal parts vindication and disbelief at the sheer scale of what has been exposed. The African Mirror has compiled the fullest account yet of who has fallen — and who is next in line.
FIRED
● Brigadier Rachel Matjeng – Dismissed from SAPS on 30 June 2026 after an internal disciplinary process found her guilty of accepting gratification, money laundering, dishonesty and improperly assisting Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, with whom she admitted to an intermittent romantic relationship. Acting National Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane confirmed the dismissal, saying it “sends a clear message that corruption, criminality and any form of collusion with criminals have no place” in SAPS. Matjeng also faces a separate criminal case over the R360-million Medicare24 tender.
● Major-General Richard Shibiri – The former head of SAPS organised crime investigations was dismissed after being named by President Cyril Ramaphosa as one of five officials singled out for urgent action following the commission’s first interim report. He had already been suspended in February 2025 over his alleged relationship with Matlala and evidence that he tried to bribe investigators probing the murder of engineer Armand Swart.
SUSPENDED
● Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya — The Deputy National Commissioner for Crime Detection was suspended after allegations that he played a central role in criminal infiltration of SAPS and interfered with sensitive investigations.
● Major-General Feroz Khan — The suspended Gauteng Crime Intelligence deputy head was arrested on 10 May 2026 on corruption charges linked to an alleged illicit precious-metals syndicate, and separately faces commission allegations that he covered up illegal cigarette smuggling and interfered in the 2021 Aeroton cocaine bust. He was shot and wounded in an apparent assassination attempt in Houghton, Johannesburg, on 28 June 2026 — hours before he was due back on the stand — and remains hospitalised. On 3 July, with Khan still unable to testify, the commission read his witness statement into the record in his absence, revealing WhatsApp exchanges that allegedly show him facilitating SAPS Covid-19 supply-tender access for tobacco businessman Mohamed “Mo” Sayed, and messages in which Sayed is said to have relayed assurances from EFF leader Julius Malema that the party would shield Khan from disciplinary action.
● Sergeant Fannie Nkosi — The suspended Gauteng Organised Crime Unit sergeant was arrested on 2 April 2026 after a raid on his Pretoria North home uncovered a stun grenade, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, SAPS equipment and stolen case dockets hidden under a mattress. He has been linked to the irregular award of a R2.9-billion Tshwane Metro Police tender to a company owned by his brother, and was denied bail.
● Julius Mkhwanazi and Kagiso Michael Lerutla — The suspended Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department deputy chief and the Ekurhuleni city manager were arrested and appeared before the Boksburg Magistrates’ Court, with bail denied. Mkhwanazi faces separate, still-unresolved allegations before the commission linking him to robbery, murder, corruption and kidnapping.
● Gareth Mnisi — The suspended Tshwane Metro Police chief financial officer faced days of hostile cross-examination over alleged political interference in policing and procurement irregularities.
● Samuel Mashaba — The suspended Gauteng traffic police chief, arrested at the original 2021 Aeroton drug bust, admitted before the commission to receiving up to R50,000 from businessman Tumelo Nku and was accused by Justice Madlanga himself of being untruthful about the true nature of their relationship.
● Nine SAPS bid-evaluation officers – The full committee that approved Matlala’s R360-million Medicare24 contract was suspended on 5 June 2026, hours after Shibiri’s dismissal was announced — a sign the fallout is now reaching well beyond the generals.
ARRESTED AND CHARGED
● Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala — the alleged organised-crime figure at the centre of the entire saga pleaded guilty in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on 1 July 2026 to charges over the R360-million Medicare24 tender, though the court rejected the agreed sentence. He remains held at Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre and separately faces 25 charges, including 11 counts of attempted murder, alongside co-accused Musa Kekana, Tiego Floyd Mabusela, Tsakane Matlala and Zandile Nthabiseng Nzama.
● General Busi Temba, Brigadier Ofentse Tlhoaele, Brigadier Kistey Jonker and Brigadier Thembinkosi Ngema — Among twelve senior police officers arrested on 24 March 2026 over the Medicare24 tender, appearing in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on charges of fraud, money laundering, tender manipulation and PFMA contraventions.
● Matipandile Sotheni — The former SAPS Special Task Force member has been charged with the murder of Marius van der Merwe — identified before the commission as “Witness D” — who was found dead in December 2025 after confessing that he had been instructed to dispose of a body dumped in the Duduza Dam in Nigel.
THE WITNESS WHO MAY BE NEXT
No figure illustrates the commission’s unpredictable churn better than Tumelo Nku, the self-described “ethical hacker” and businessman who first appeared as a purported police informant in the 2021 Aeroton bust that netted 715 kilograms of cocaine worth roughly R300 million. Nku spent weeks insisting he had acted only as an unpaid source. That account unravelled in late June, when a protected Hawks analyst, identified only as Witness J, told the commission in camera that cellphone forensics showed Nku was not an informant at all but an active participant in a trafficking network, with ties reaching into the ANC.
Under sustained questioning from Justice Madlanga, Nku changed his story more than once. After what he described as “a long and hard chat” with his pastor, he returned to the stand and admitted that R60,000 found in his car on the day of the bust had in fact been earmarked to bribe a Transnet contact for confidential truck-tracking data — a direct contradiction of his earlier claim that the cash was simply travel money. He also told the commission he had been introduced to a trafficker known as “Eby” or “Iby” by the late former deputy defence minister Kebby Maphatsoe, and that the Aeroton bust had in fact been arranged to sabotage a rival syndicate’s shipment, not to enforce the law.
Then, on 2 July 2026, with Nku present and expecting to conclude his evidence, the commission abruptly halted proceedings. “There are security concerns about Nku. We cannot hear his testimony at this stage. The hearing of his testimony is postponed indefinitely,” Justice Madlanga announced, giving no further detail on the nature of the threat and no date for Nku’s return. Nku has not been arrested and no charges have yet been announced against him, but the trajectory of his testimony — informant, to facilitator, to confessed participant in a bribery scheme, now abruptly silenced on security grounds — has made him the commission’s most closely watched witness, and, in the court of public opinion, a strong candidate to join the gallery he has helped expose.
STOP PRESS: THE NET WIDENS FURTHER
The gallery kept growing this week. On 1 July, the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court accepted Matlala’s guilty plea but rejected the sentence agreed between his lawyers and the state as too lenient; the matter returns to court on 13 July, and until the plea-and-sentence agreement is either accepted or abandoned, it remains unclear whether prosecutors can use his cooperation against his SAPS co-accused. The commission has separately confirmed it has subpoenaed Matlala – described by spokesperson Jeremy Michaels as a “central figure” in its investigation – to testify in person on Tuesday 7 July, on condition, his legal team argues, that he not be cross-examined on the Medicare24 tender itself.
Other names have also entered the frame in the past fortnight. An anonymous Johannesburg Metro Police VIP Protection Unit officer, testifying in camera as “Witness K” to protect her identity, told the commission she had been in a romantic relationship with Julius Mkhwanazi and admitted her own role in an alleged R14.9-million theft of precious sugilite stones from a Killarney flat in 2023, staged as a lawful police search. Mkhwanazi, already facing separate criminal charges, has disputed her account. Meanwhile, North West businessman Suleiman Carrim has twice postponed his testimony on medical grounds and now faces the possibility that the commission proceeds to findings without hearing him at all, while fellow businessman Brown Mogotsi is already facing criminal charges of his own over an allegedly staged assassination attempt and a falsified police report.
A COMMISSION WITH TEETH – AND A TARGET ON ITS BACK
The human cost of the commission’s momentum has become impossible to ignore. Van der Merwe’s death in December 2025 rattled witnesses and raised fears the inquiry could be intimidated into silence. Khan’s shooting on the eve of his own testimony has revived those fears in far starker terms, prompting the commission to expand its use of in-camera and remote evidence for witnesses it judges to be at risk.
Even so, the pace of consequence has not let up. Every dismissal, arrest and suspension chronicled here followed evidence first aired, tested and stress-tested in the full glare of a live-streamed hearing – a level of transparency that has done more to restore public faith in the possibility of accountability than years of internal SAPS disciplinary processes ever managed. Political analysts caution that the commission has yet to land a single implicated politician of national standing, and civil society has noted pointedly that former police minister Bheki Cele – repeatedly named in testimony – has faced no action to date. The verdict on whether this is systemic reform or a purge confined to the uniformed ranks remains open.
What is not in dispute is the arithmetic. Two dismissals. At least a dozen suspensions across SAPS, Crime Intelligence and metro police structures. More than a dozen arrests tied directly to the Medicare24 tender alone, plus a separate arrest of the commission’s own central witness, Feroz Khan, and murder, attempted murder, and racketeering cases spinning off the same investigation. And, hovering at the edge of the frame, a self-confessed participant in a drug bribery scheme now silenced by an unexplained security threat, a VIP-protection officer confessing to a multimillion-rand stones heist, and a central cartel figure due back in the witness box within days — each one a name that could yet be added to an already crowded gallery.
- All individuals named face untested allegations before a commission of inquiry or in criminal proceedings that remain before the courts, and are presumed innocent unless and until convicted. The Madlanga Commission continues to sit, with hearings streamed live and further testimony – including the resumption of Feroz Khan’s evidence, Vusimuzi Matlala’s scheduled appearance on 7 July, and the still-unscheduled recall of Tumelo Nku – expected in the days and weeks ahead.
