On 17 December 2025, the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry delivered to the president its first interim report on the work it did in 2025. The report has not been made public, but it has apparently been studied by the presidency.
According to reports and a presidential statement, the commission found prima facie evidence of corruption and other related wrongdoings on the part of 14 individuals employed either by SAPS or by the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD), the latter being an apparent hotbed of corrupt activities. The evidence before the commission made these findings by it inevitable.
The president has made public an instruction he has taken upon himself to issue in relation to the 14 alleged miscreants identified by the commission, in which he identifies all 14 suspects individually. In part, it reads:
“Clause 12 [of the terms of reference of the Commission] states that ‘the Commission shall, where appropriate, refer any matter for prosecution, further investigation or the convening of a separate enquiry to the appropriate law enforcement agency, government department or regulator.’
President Ramaphosa expects all law enforcement agencies and other relevant criminal justice institutions to act with speed in implementing the recommendations of the Commission’s interim report. Such immediate action will help to restore public trust and strengthen operational capacity in the affected state entities tasked with fighting crime and corruption.
Where the Commission has said that there is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing, it has made referrals for investigation by the appropriate officials in the South African Police Service (SAPS), Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) or the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM).”
Addressing wrongdoing by police personnel, including those employed at municipal level, is the legislated task of IPID. The legislation, dating back to 2011, was amended in various respects in 2024. Relevant here are the amendments:
- to provide for the Directorate’s institutional and operational independence;
- to provide that the Directorate must be independent, impartial and must exercise its powers and functions without fear, favour, prejudice, or undue influence in order to give effect to the judgment of the Constitutional Court in the case of McBride v Minister of Police and Another;
The IPID Act makes it clear that corruption of police personnel is within the remit of IPID:
“Corruption, [matters] as contemplated in the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act,2004 (Act No.12 of 2004), and any other applicable law, within the [police] South African Police Service, or a municipal police service.”
Corruption complaints to IPID may be initiated by a host of functionaries or even after the receipt of a complaint from a member of the public, or referred to the Directorate by the Minister, an MEC, the National Commissioner, or the appropriate Provincial Commissioner, etc.
The Madlanga Commission has its genesis in a complaint by the KZN Provincial Commissioner of Police, Lt Gen N Mhkwanazi. He apprehends that a drug cartel has captured elements of the state, including some senior police personnel.
A media briefing was held by the Chief of Police and the new NDPP on 6 February 2026, in response to the president’s instructions. According to media reports, IPID does not feature in their official response. Instead, ordinary police personnel, selected prosecutors and the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the NPA will be welded together as a “task team” to deal with the 14 alleged miscreants within three months.
Why IPID is excluded has not been explained, especially in the face of the presidential reference to IPID in the statement of 29 January. Nor has the binding decision in Glenister Two been factored into the responses from the heads of the police and the prosecution service. All serious corruption in SA should be dealt with effectively by “a body outside executive control.” IPID is the closest one can get to that hallowed status as matters stand, because the body required by the Constitutional Court in Glenister Two for all corruption, not just corrupt police personnel, has not seen the light of day yet.
IPID’s degree of independence is questionable, but it is at least more independent than the NPA and the police themselves are, within the framework of the criminal justice system as it is currently structured and within which the Chief of Police and head of the NPA operate. There is no question that the police are answerable to the Minister of Police. The full extent of that relationship will be interrogated when the Madlanga Commission deals with the entitlement or not of the then Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu, (now on gardening leave), to shut down the political-killings task team off his own bat. Pure motives for doing so suggest an intention to improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice administration, while base motives suggest an intention to protect the corrupt by shielding them from the attention of the (not yet corrupted) authorities.
The National Prosecuting Authority is indubitably lacking in independence because:
- The Minister of Justice has final responsibility over it in terms of Section 179 of the Constitution.
- The same section requires that the minister concurs in all prosecution policies devised by the leadership of the NPA. This provision effectively gives the minister veto rights over the specifics of prosecution policy. The clash between Vusi Pikoli, then NDPP, and Brigitte Mabandla, then minister, is a good illustration of this point.
- The accounting officer of the NPA is the director general of justice, who is not even a member of the NPA.
- The NPA operates as a programme within the Department of Justice.
- The leader of the NPA, the National Director of Public Prosecutions is a presidential appointee.
- He or she has no power to appoint the leadership team of the NPA.
- To the extent that Section 179 makes reference to the NPA operating “without fear, favour or prejudice”, this exhortation is one for operational impartiality, not structural independence. No legislation entrenching NPA impartiality has, in any event, ever been passed by parliament.
The Constitutional Court has firmly turned its back on any executive control of the anti-corruption machinery of state. Indeed, it would appear, from the evidence before both the Zondo Commission and the Madlanga Commission, that executive control is part of the mischief the latter commission will be required to address in its final report.
The Glenister judgment lays down criteria that are now absent in both the police and the NPA in its current incarnation. The main features of these criteria have become known as the STIRS criteria, an acronym for Specialised, Trained, Independent, Resourced, and Secure in tenure of office.
The work of the state in countering corruption involves the prevention, combating, detection, investigation and prosecution of the corrupt. The court requires a “one-stop shop” for all these functions when it uses the words “deal with corruption” in its reasoning. The single agency approach to corruption which it requires is by far preferable to the multi-agency approach favoured by the government since the coming into operation of the Constitution. A single agency “outside executive control” presents no opportunities for executive interference in and influence over anti-corruption activities.
The exclusion of IPID from the task team may be regarded and interpreted as indicative of its institutional weakness, and its lack of resources to take on 14 mainly senior personnel simultaneously. The official reason for its exclusion would be nice to know, but has yet to be mentioned.
The only good news is that there are two bills pending in parliament that contemplate the establishment and enablement of a new Chapter Nine body, an Anti-Corruption Commission which will, once created, tick all the boxes created in the Glenister litigation. This will be a standing commission with teeth, not a judicial commission of inquiry in which findings and recommendations are not binding. The process by which the two bills were initiated is described by the lawyers involved in the free e-book, “Under the Swinging Arch”. Just google its title.
Parliament should rapidly get on with debating, sharpening and passing the two bills into law so that the current trend towards burgeoning grand corruption with impunity does not leave SA as a failed state: one in which lip service to the rule of law is exposed in the ruins of a constitutional order that once promised a better life for all. That happy circumstance is one in which the state respects, protects, promotes and fulfils the human rights guaranteed to all in the Bill of Rights. IPID should, as was suggested to the Ad Hoc Committee of Parliament on 2 February, have its anti-corruption mandate removed and transferred to the new Chapter Nine body. In this way the country can get out of the woods in which the NPA and SAPS are currently lost.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/governmentza/53405407941/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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