PiE STAFF REPORT
Two of the most closely watched witnesses at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry are, within days of each other, edging back toward the witness stand.
Advocate Andrea Johnson, head of the National Prosecuting Authority’s Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC), has been declared “no longer ill” by the commission after a dramatic hospitalisation derailed her scheduled testimony last week, with a new date for her appearance expected to be announced soon.
Almost simultaneously, Major-General Feroz Khan, the suspended deputy national head of Crime Intelligence who was shot in what police are treating as a suspected assassination attempt, has been discharged from hospital and has begun a period of rehabilitation.
The commission, however, is prioritising Johnson. Evidence heard over the past week — including sworn testimony this Tuesday and Wednesday from senior IDAC investigator Colonel Brian Padayachee — has placed Johnson, Khan and Padayachee himself inside overlapping allegations of leaked dockets, protective interference and an alleged informal network some witnesses have dubbed a “cabal.” Johnson is expected to be called first.
The Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System — chaired by retired Constitutional Court justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga — was established to probe claims that organised crime figures, rogue police officers and compromised prosecutors have captured parts of South Africa’s law-enforcement architecture. In recent months it has become almost as well known for the string of witnesses who have fallen ill, been hospitalised or otherwise failed to appear on their scheduled dates, a pattern commissioners have openly criticised. Justice Madlanga has repeatedly dismissed some of the medical certificates submitted to the inquiry as “useless,” saying they “give no information whatsoever.”
Johnson was due to testify on Monday, 13 July, to answer allegations that, in 2018, while a senior NPA prosecutor, she funnelled details of a confidential assault docket to the very officer it concerned — Khan. A whistleblower, testifying partly in camera as “Witness O,” told the commission she had been instructed to hand over a private email address into which the docket contents were then sent, with instructions that the message be printed and later deleted. Retired Hawks colonel Kobus Roelofse, who investigated the underlying assault case, separately told the inquiry he understood investigators had been instructed not to pursue certain aspects of it — feeding allegations that the probe was improperly influenced from within IDAC.
Hours before she was due on the stand, Johnson’s legal team told the commission she had suffered a medical emergency en route to the hearing in Pretoria and had been rushed to hospital. A certificate booked her off until 15 July. Madlanga pressed evidence leader Mahlape Sello on why the inquiry could not proceed in Johnson’s absence, as it had for other hospitalised witnesses, using documentary evidence already on record. Sello responded that Johnson’s evidence — a statement and supplementary statement, both narrative rather than documentary — did not lend itself to that approach, so proceedings were adjourned entirely.
By this week, commission spokesperson Jeremy Michaels confirmed Johnson was “no longer ill” and that the inquiry was eager to hear her evidence, with a new date to be announced. Her postponed appearance had already drawn attention beyond the hearing room: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office indicated he was “looking forward” to her testimony.
Khan’s absence from the commission has a starker origin. He was due to begin testifying on 28 June when he was shot in Johannesburg the night before his scheduled appearance, in an attack police are investigating as a possible assassination attempt. He was left unconscious and unable to testify, and the commission proceeded to hear evidence concerning him — including claims that he shared confidential information with a senior politician and allegations that he assaulted a Crime Intelligence colleague — without his response, on the understanding he would be given the opportunity to reply once fit.
Khan’s family confirmed this week that he has now been discharged from hospital but “requires a period of recovery, rehabilitation and rest.” That period, the family said in a statement, will also be used to determine whether Khan is able to assist the commission before its extended deadline — whether in person or via affidavit — and they used the statement to criticise police for what they described as a lack of feedback on the investigation into the shooting itself. The commission has not yet set a new date for his testimony.
The two matters are not parallel by coincidence. Johnson’s alleged docket leak in 2018 directly concerned Khan, and testimony this month has drawn a tighter web around the two of them and the wider Crime Intelligence environment. The commission has heard that Johnson’s husband is a serving Crime Intelligence officer, and MK party MP Vusi Shongwe told the inquiry he understood Johnson, Padayachee, fellow IDAC investigator Suneel Bellochun and Khan to form part of an informal network — which he and others characterised in testimony as an “Indian cabal” — operating across IDAC and Crime Intelligence.
It is against that backdrop that Padayachee’s testimony this week carries particular weight. Appearing on Tuesday and continuing into Wednesday, the senior IDAC investigator — who spent decades in SAPS, including a stint in Crime Intelligence, before joining IDAC — flatly denied the existence of any such cabal. “I have no knowledge of a ‘Khan-IDAC’ cabal within IDAC,” he told the commission. “It follows that if such a cabal exists, I am not party to it.” He also rejected separate claims by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi that he had improperly influenced the criminal case against Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo, insisting IDAC’s evidence in that matter was sound.
But Padayachee’s account has not been uniformly exculpatory. Questioned about a Section 27 referral central to the Khumalo case, he acknowledged he had not personally received the underlying complaint until months after the investigation was already under way — an account Madlanga called “highly improbable.” He was also unable to satisfactorily explain why an affidavit taken by a colleague in Cape Town bore a Pretoria stamp, offering only that investigators “carry our stamps with us” while travelling, an explanation Madlanga again queried as inconsistent with normal practice. And on the question of IDAC’s internal decision-making, Padayachee repeatedly deferred upward, telling the commission that questions about whether complaints met IDAC’s jurisdictional threshold — the same threshold issue underlying the Khan docket dispute — were matters “best answered by his boss, Johnson.”
Taken together, the effect of Padayachee’s evidence has been to simultaneously distance himself from the most serious “cabal” allegations while redirecting the commission’s central jurisdictional and procedural questions back toward Johnson — and, more obliquely, keeping Khan’s conduct in the frame as the officer at the centre of the docket dispute that first drew Johnson into the inquiry’s sights.
With both Johnson and Khan now medically cleared to at least begin engaging with the process, the commission’s evidence leaders have made clear they intend to prioritise Johnson. Her account is expected to directly address the Padayachee and Witness O testimony, the alleged docket leak, and the broader question of whether IDAC’s leadership shielded a Crime Intelligence officer from prosecution. Khan’s rehabilitation period, by contrast, is open-ended, and his family has signalled he may ultimately respond by affidavit rather than in person if his recovery does not allow it before the commission’s extended deadline.
For a commission already under pressure over delays and repeated medical postponements, the coming weeks — with Johnson expected back on the stand — are set to be among its most consequential yet.
Note: The Madlanga Commission has made no final findings against any individual named above. All allegations remain under examination.