Handover of 121 dockets to the South African Police Service was ‘messy’, Madlanga commission hears:
The disbandment of a KwaZulu-Natal-based political killings task team was a surprise, and the handover of 121 dockets it was working on to the South African Police Service (SAPS) head office was “messy”, a member of the team told the Madlanga commission on Monday.
“Within 24 hours, [task team] members had to try and scan all the dockets,” Lieutenant Ntate Khumalo testified at the commission set up by President Cyril Ramaphosa to look into allegations of corruption and political interference in the criminal justice system.
“I told them to prepare a report so that when these dockets go to head office and there are questions pertaining to certain things, we are able to go to our archives, draw those reports, and be able to answer any queries that may come forth.”
Asked what he thought about the instruction to gather 121 dockets within 24 hours immediately, Khumalo responded: “It was hence earlier on I said it was messy. If we had been given ample time, there would have been a smooth handover, because handing over is a very crucial and important process. If it is not properly coordinated, we’ll start pointing fingers at each other.”
Earlier on Monday, the commission heard that deputy national commissioner Shadrack Sibiya ordered the removal of the 121 dockets in May after suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu disbanded the task team in December 2024.
Head of the SAPS Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, Mary Motsepe, said the dockets originated from her office and were sent to the KwaZulu-Natal task team in 2018. Sibiya instructed her to collect the dockets from crime intelligence boss Dumisani Khumalo for an audit, which did not require the transfer.
She added that KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi later refused to receive the dockets after the audit and said they were no longer his responsibility.
National commissioner Fannie Masemola expressed the same sentiments and said Sibiya should use his discretion on what to do about the audited dockets, Motsepe added.
Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia subsequently returned the dockets to the task team in August.
He has told parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating similar claims of police corruption that Mchunu should have consulted before issuing the letter and that task teams were not meant to be permanent.
On Monday, Khumalo said he learned about the task team’s disbandment letter on social media while awaiting the unit’s budget approval.
“We had already submitted the financial documents for January, then comes this letter,” he said, adding that he called crime intelligence head Khumalo, his immediate commander and task team project coordinator, to ask about the letter.
The commission has previously heard that Mchunu disbanded the team to protect Gauteng criminal syndicates. Senior police officials have accused murder co-accused Vusimuzi Cat Matlala and Katiso Molefe, the alleged leaders of the Big Five cartel, of instigating Mchunu to disband the task team.
Khumalo said that the crime intelligence boss instructed the task team officers to monitor ongoing court cases and not to touch investigations. Lieutenant Khumalo noted that he subsequently called task team leaders to ask if they had heard about the letter.
“The comments that I heard from the commanders were not nice. It damaged them. It left scars because there were cases that were remanded to January … other members were out working on the 31st [December] when this letter surfaced,” he said.
“I even suggested to General Khumalo that,‘General, could I coordinate that members get employee wellness to come and address them, because they didn’t take it likely?”.
On 10 January, more than a week after the disbandment letter, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi addressed task team members.
“He assured them that, ‘you are soldiers on the ground, continue doing policing and investigating by preventing and combating crime, we at the executive level, we’ll attend to the letter,” Lieutenant Khumalo testified.
Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has told the commission that the task team’s budget was approved in September and will run until March 2026.
Madlanga: Sibiya removed 121 dockets for no apparent reason:
Suspended deputy national commissioner for crime Shadrack Sibiya moved 121 case dockets from the KwaZulu-Natal-based political killings task team without a proper explanation, a witness told the Madlanga Commission on Monday.
Mary Motsepe, the head of serious and violent crimes, told the commission, chaired by retired judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga, that she was instructed to collect the dockets from the office of the crime intelligence boss, Dumisani Khumalo, for an audit that could have been conducted in KwaZulu-Natal.
“When I was told my team would be conducting the investigation I asked General Sibiya for the real reasons for the disbandment of the [task team], he told me that according to the approved organisational structure the [task team] must cease to operate and fall under murder and robbery which is a section under the serious and violent crimes investigation of which I am the component head,” she said.
Sibiya signed off on the dockets’ removal — allegedly without the approval of national police commissioner Fannie Masemola — after suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s December 2024 directive to disband the task team.
Sibiya has told the ad hoc committee in parliament, which is conducting its own inquiry into police corruption, that the dockets had been gathering dust since the task team’s launch in 2018 and that he had plans to enhance the South African Police Service (SAPS) murder and robbery unit to perform the same task.
Motsepe told the commission that the 121 dockets initially originated from her office; they were then taken over by the KwaZulu-Natal task team in 2018, returned to her office this May, and subsequently sent back to the province in August by acting police minister Firoz Cachalia.
“We don’t just take dockets from the provinces; we engage them, as most of the dockets come as complaints at our office. So I don’t see any problem if these dockets were taken to murder and robbery in KZN,” she said.
She said the dockets were to be audited at the SAPS head office, which entailed comparing details with the police system, but said this could have been done in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mchunu sent the letter via WhatsApp to disband the task team. Masemola has told the commission that the letter was sent to him while he was on leave, without consultation. He also said Sibiya signed off on the removal of the dockets without his approval.
Co-deputy police ministers Cassel Mathale and Shela Boshielo have told the ad hoc committee that they found out about the disbandment letter on social media and had noted disagreements between Mchunu and Masemola.
Mchunu has testified to the committee that his letter did not address how the dockets should be handled, and that he was simply implementing a police research study that recommended disbanding them to strengthen internal police capacity.
Motsepe said Sibiya argued there should be “a fair representation of the murder and robbery sections within the nine provinces, not just in KZN” and that “the budget allocation for the [KwaZulu-Natal team] was a problem as it was disproportionately higher … than any other unit dealing with the same types of crimes”.
Motsepe said she didn’t know what the suspended minister was thinking when he said the task team was no longer adding value to policing, adding: “even though they were disbanded, they are police officers serving a purpose”.
She said Sibiya’s order to remove the 121 dockets seemed to be “expanding” on Mchunu’s directive.
“Although I was not involved in the disbandment process, I agree with the view that the [task team] should not have been disbanded without proper consultation,” she said.
“I do not know if the minister had the authority to disband the [task team], however, even if the minister had the authority to disband the [task team], he had to first consult with all the relevant stakeholders, which would have included me as the component head responsible for Serious and Violent crimes.”
She said the task team should not have been disbanded before the upcoming local government elections, adding: “It is a well-known fact that KZN has the highest incidents of political killings and there’s usually a spike in politically motivated killings before elections.”
“It does not make sense to disband the [task team] immediately unless the stakeholders had advised the minister that immediate disbandment would have been appropriate,” Motsepe said.
When requested to collect the dockets from head office, the KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner, Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, complained that he “had nothing to do with those dockets,” she said.
Masemola also told her the dockets were now Sibiya’s responsibility and “he should use his discretion”.
Motsepe told the commission that Sibiya assigned her to handle the dockets transfer and audit in May, arguing that the new SAPS structure required the dockets to be placed under the murder and robbery unit, as per a police research study.
“I instructed my team to conduct an analysis of the dockets and prepare a report on their findings,” said Motsepe, adding that this commenced from 19 to 30 May.
She said the dockets had been audited, and she subsequently wrote a report to Sibiya that included missing witness statements on some of the dockets.
Agoa’s expiration could present trade opportunities for African nations:
The expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) should not be seen as a setback for African nations but rather as an opportunity to strengthen local industries, upskill workforces and expand regional trade, experts have said.
Agoa is a United States law that provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to that market for more than 1 800 products.
The Act expired in September, and there remains uncertainty over its renewal. But amid the punitive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, countries are considering measures to safeguard their trade markets.
African markets can leverage their skills to develop their markets and also strengthen intra-African trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), said Rose Ngugi, a fellow in the African Economic Research Consortium.
“We have actually built skills in the textile market that were probably not there, and we need to secure them,” Ngugi said.
“I see the skills, for example, helping us to develop our textile market, and it may be high time we discuss the second-hand market for textiles, as there may be an opportunity to get on with building our textile market.”
The second opportunity lies in the AfCFTA, Ngugi said during a recent panel discussion at last week’s Think20 (T20) summit, one of the official engagement groups of the G20, which this year falls under South Africa’s presidency.
“It is probably the right time to start talking about ‘buy in Africa, build in Africa’ for all the goods that were targeted for a poor market. Very little was coming into the continent or being flown across the countries. We can continue producing the same, but I think that we can now explore the market at the continental level,” she added.
“AfCFTA is all about zero tariffs, and one of the things that the African Union and the architect of AfCFTA may want to look at is how to take advantage of this effort that we have done so far, build the capabilities and keep them high for Africa again.”
With Trump’s tariffs having rocked the economies of many countries, panellists discussed the way forward for a new world trade order and the role of the World Trade Organisation, saying multilateralism is the ideal way for countries to support each other.
“We need multilateral rules, especially for developing countries, and voluntary compliance commitments,” said Sait Akman, director of the G20 Studies Centre at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkiye.
“I think we need to talk about still putting the World Trade Organisation at the centre of the trade regime, although it is not very easy. But the World Trade Organisation…has been increasingly short of performing many of its functions, like multilateral rulemaking as a forum for trade negotiations and dispute settlement, which was one of the best achievements before.”
Akman warned that the global trade system is shifting away from a rules-based, growth-oriented multilateral order toward a more fragmented, security-driven and transactional system dominated by bilateral deals.
“What is the main challenge for me is that the governance of the global system is evolving into a kind of physical, fragmented system, which I call a hybrid system. We have deviations. Not only are we having problems with the function, but also its core norms are not challenged. So we face a set of new global trade norms,” he said.
“The trade regime is a set of principles, norms and rules around which actors’ expectations converge. Now we have divergences. We have serious attacks on foreign laws, particularly on multilateralism, non-discrimination, liberalisation, and development.”
Divergence refers to major countries and trading blocs moving away from shared rules, shared expectations, and common principles in the global trade system.
The unprecedented Trump-imposed tariffs have not had as significant an effect as expected in the near term, but there is a need to absorb their impact in the coming year, said the vice president for research at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, Antonio Villafranca.
“International trade in 2025 is doing incredibly well. International trade will grow by 2.4%, while the forecast made in Africa when Trump announced the tariffs itself was -0.4. In just a few months, we moved from -0.4 to 2.4% which is quite good, but this is only an apparent effect of all these cloud studies. There are many expeditious ways going on.”
“At the moment, what it is important to do immediately is to gauge what the effect of Trump’s tariffs in terms of a divergence, trade divergence, otherwise multilateralism and all the things that we’re talking about will simply not happen, because uncertainty will prevail.”
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