South Africa’s police inquiries have been serving pure drama this week, with the Madlanga Commission and parliament’s Ad hoc committee somehow morphing into a conspiracy theory circus.
For weeks, the Madlanga Commission lined up witness after witness detailing alleged rot inside SAPS. That was Phase 1. This week, the commission flipped the script into Phase 2 – the stage where the implicated parties finally get to tell their side under oath.
Here are the moments that had everyone glued to their screens.
🔹 Brown Mogotsi’s blockbuster claims
In testimony that sounded more Hollywood than judicial, North West businessman Brown Mogotsi told the Madlanga Commission he was an undercover “contact agent” for Crime Intelligence. He said he was recruited as a Crime Intelligence informant in 1999 and, in 2009, was elevated to “contact agent”, handled by senior police officials for years.
To sum it up: Despite other witnesses describing Mogotsi as a political fixer with his fingers in the justice system (with links as high up as Police Minister Senzo Mchunu), Mogotsi claims he was tackling corruption from the inside out. Right.
From there, the claims got wilder. Mogotsi alleged that KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is secretly a CIA operative, a suspicion he shared with none other than former police minister Nathi Mthethwa (Mthethwa died in September this year of suicide).
🔹 John Wick = “Cat” Matlala, apparently
Another one of Mogotsi’s biggest revelations was supposedly identifying the notorious Pretoria hitman known as “John Wick”, long rumoured to be targeting the Mamelodi-based Boko Haram gang. Mogotsi testified that John Wick is allegedly Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, a named member of the ‘Big Five’ cartel also under scrutiny at the commission, whom he says he had been asked to monitor by Police Minister Bheki Cele in 2018.
Neither SAPS nor Mchunu has issued any official comment confirming or denying that Matlala is the “John Wick” alias —the claim remains explosive but entirely unverified, leaving most South Africans treating it as just the latest chapter in the never-ending telenovela of police corruption and gangster nicknames.
🔹 Mary de Haas vs Parliament
Separately, veteran violence monitor Mary de Haas appeared before Parliament’s ad hoc committee on disbandment of the KwaZulu-Natal Political Killings Task Team. Unlike other witnesses who praised the Task Team, De Haas detailed serious allegations of abuse and torture by the unit, drawn from whistle-blower accounts.
But MPs were not impressed. Some dismissed her testimony as “hearsay”, while others accused her of making sweeping claims without confirmable evidence. At one point, de Haas lost her temper as MPs pushed back, saying, “It’s becoming a witch hunt”.
In a week when Malusi Gigaba was in the dock and Ramaphosa was shading Trump’s empty G20 chair, the Madlanga Commission still managed to steal the chaos crown. Only in Mzansi.
