MADLANGA COMMISSION ANNIVERSARY: Mkhwanazi’s ‘too grave to contemplate’ allegations gain grim weight

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> One year on, Madlanga’s hearings appear to corroborate KZN police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s claims of corrupt networks, prompting criminal probes, disciplinary action and urgent calls to restore integrity in the SAPS.

A year after Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi appeared as the first witness before the Madlanga Commission with allegations Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga described as ‘too grave to contemplate’, the commission chair has delivered his starkest assessment yet: the evidence points to serious criminality within South Africa’s criminal justice system and the infiltration of state institutions by criminal networks.

When Mkhwanazi took the stand on 17 September 2025, he brought before the Commission a troubling chain of events : a murder, a secret investigation and what he described as unusual influence when now sidelined police minister Senzo Mchunu decided to disband the Political Killing Task Team (PKTT).

Mkhwanazi has also long maintained that suspended deputy national police commissioner Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya was at the centre of criminal networks that had infiltrated South Africa’s law enforcement agencies.

His explosive media briefing on 6 July 2025 was the genesis of the commission, turning allegations of criminality, political interference and the alleged capture of parts of the criminal justice system into a judicial inquiry.

Among his accusations was that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, now on special leave, had directed the disbandment of the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT), allegedly to shield politically connected members of a criminal syndicate from prosecution.

That briefing set in motion a process of no return, placing the inner workings of the criminal justice system under unprecedented public and judicial scrutiny. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on 13 July 2025 that a Judicial Commission of Inquiry would be established to investigate Mkhwanazi’s allegations

On the first anniversary of the hearings, Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga reflected on the ground covered since Mkhwanazi became the first witness and, more significantly, on what the evidence had revealed about the state of the criminal justice system.

A year earlier, Madlanga had warned that if Mkhwanazi’s allegations proved true, they would “spell doom” to a system, the rule of law and a functioning constitutional democracy. A year later, he posed the question himself: had Mkhwanazi’s allegations proved false, or were they proving true?

Justice Madlanga was careful to stress that the commission had yet to hear and assess all the evidence and would make definitive findings only in its final report.