When & where it sits
Madlanga Commission schedule
When and where the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry sits, how many days it has heard, the latest sitting dates, and how to follow each day without the 8-to-10-hour live feed.
How it sits
When and where the Commission sits
The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry sits in Pretoria, at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College, where retired Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga and the commissioners receive evidence led by the evidence leaders. Hearing days run on weekdays during each block, typically eight to ten hours, with tea and lunch adjournments.
181 sitting days are recorded here so far. The most recent is Day 181 on 30 Sep 2026. Exact upcoming dates are set and announced by the Commission; this page updates as new days are added.
Inside a sitting
How a Madlanga Commission hearing day runs
A typical hearing day opens with the chairperson confirming the day’s witness, who takes the oath. An evidence leader then takes the witness through a sworn statement paragraph by paragraph, putting the supporting exhibits - cellphone downloads, bank records, official documents - on screen as they go.
The commissioners interject with their own questions throughout, and proceedings break for tea mid-morning and for lunch around 13:00 before resuming into the afternoon. A full day can run eight to ten hours, and where a witness is not finished their evidence carries over to the next sitting day - which is why following the latest updates day to day matters.
Latest sittings
Recent Madlanga Commission hearing days
Madlanga Commission - Day 181
The last public sitting of the commission's evidence before it goes behind closed doors, and it turned from a quarry to a bus company. Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni returned for a second day of cross-examination and chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC put a sequence to him rather than a single allegation: that he told the President of the country his people would be behind any interference with Putco, that Putco was then interfered with on a scale the company counted, that its depots were burned, and that a body he chairs offered to buy it. Per Sowetan and TimesLIVE the commission heard that Putco recorded more than 350 incidents between October 2024 and January 2025 in which taxi operators blocked its buses from working around KwaNdebele. Per The Citizen and IOL the commission played footage of a January 2024 African National Congress campaign event at which Sibanyoni told President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister Gwede Mantashe, in support of a demand that local operators get 30 percent of Putco's Mpumalanga routes, 'when you find someone wanting to interfere with the Putco business, you must know it is us. Don't put red tapes.' Per Sowetan and Inside Politics the commission then took him through the night of 27 January 2025, when armed men took Putco's depots and burned roughly 51 buses, 16 of them at the Moloto depot in under ten minutes on closed circuit footage; through a message he sent about acquiring buses some 36 hours later; and through the unsolicited offer that Taxi Choice, the business arm of the South African National Taxi Council which he chairs, made to buy Putco on 25 February 2025. Per Eyewitness News and Inside Politics he rejected the whole construction: 'I differ. I differ 100% with your findings.' He said the taxis in the commission's video carried Mpumalanga plates and were not his association's, that his approach to the President concerned 'legitimate public and community matters', and that Taxi Choice's interest in Putco long predated any of it. When he suggested the questioning about Putco had become personal, per SABC News the chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga refused the suggestion and said there was nothing wrong with the evidence leader or the commission's investigators consulting Putco. Nothing on this page is a finding. No one has been charged over the depot fires on this record, Sibanyoni denies any involvement in them, his evidence and every allegation put to him are untested, and he and everyone named are presumed innocent.
Madlanga Commission - Day 180
A day after the commission read Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane's WhatsApp messages into a public record he was not in the room to answer, the man on the other end of most of them came back to the witness box to answer them for himself. Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni, president of the South African Local and Long Distance Taxi and Bus Organisation, resumed a cross-examination that had had no date since 21 September, and chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC put the alleged extortion of Dr Tengane Thomas Ntuli to him directly. His answer was that there was a business, not a racket: per The Citizen he told the commission he put R900,000 into a joint arrangement with Ntuli, whose company held mining rights to a quarry but could not meet the 30 percent local content requirement on the R572 Moloto road upgrade, and that the profit split the evidence leaders read as protection money was his 40 percent share, 'he gets 60% because you are directly involved running the quarry, give me 40%'. Per IOL and the African News Agency he went further and separated himself from his co-accused on the threatening message, telling Commissioner Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC that Sindane had been acting on his own and saying 'Ntuli and I had a good relationship, I never sent him any threatening message.' He was also asked why he had helped pay the legal bills of Calvin Gwabo Mahlangu, convicted over a taxi killing; per IOL and Eyewitness News his answer was family rather than crime, 'his family approached me ... his mother approached me to help'. He said he did not know how Sindane came to hold a confidential police docket on the alleged Kwaggafontein 20 grouping, whose papers name a man he has identified as his nephew, and Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC told him she found that unbelievable. He objected to being cross-examined at all on facts that are also the charges he faces in Delmas. Nothing on this page is a finding. Sibanyoni's evidence is untested, so is everything alleged against him, he denies the criminal charges, no court has convicted him, and he is presumed innocent. He is part-heard and returns on 30 September 2026.
Madlanga Commission - Day 179
The heaviest day left on the calendar arrived and neither of the two men it was set down for was in the room. Dismissed Major-General Feroz Khan, the former deputy head of SAPS Crime Intelligence, was under a subpoena that the 1 September ruling had already moved once to this date, and he did not appear; his legal representative, Mr Vally, applied on Sunday night for another month, arguing from psychological reports that his client should testify virtually from a familiar environment so that there are no triggers. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga refused it and went further. Per the Daily Maverick, Business Day, SABC News and The Citizen he held that 'his non-appearance today is a flagrant disregard of a subpoena by this commission' and directed the commission's secretary, Dr Nolitha Vukuza, to lay criminal charges against Khan for failing to attend, after evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim SC submitted that the non-attendance was in defiance of the subpoena and should go to the National Prosecuting Authority. Per Business Day the Commissions Act makes it an offence for a person summoned to fail to attend without sufficient cause, carrying a fine of up to R1,093 or up to six months' imprisonment, or both. Part of Khan's evidence may still be heard on 6 October if the evidence leaders' pending in camera application succeeds. The afternoon went to the other absent man. Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane lost his urgent bid in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to stop the commission using WhatsApp messages taken off his phone: per News24 it was struck from the roll with punitive costs. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC then did what the 25 September ruling permitted and led the messages into the record without him, putting up exchanges the evidence leaders read as what Chaskalson called an extortion racket enforced with threats of violence: a monthly R100,000 demanded from a businessman holding a Sanral contract on the Moloto road, legal fees funded for men convicted in taxi killings, and messages about Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala forwarded around after his arrest. Nothing on this page is a finding. Neither man has given evidence, both deny the criminal charges they face, no court has convicted either of them, and both are presumed innocent.
Madlanga Commission - Day 178
The commission sat to hear a witness who was not in the room. Taxi owner Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane, known in the industry as 'King of the Sky' and Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni's co-accused in the Delmas extortion matter, was under subpoena to give evidence at 9:30am. His legal team asked instead for a postponement on three grounds: a medical certificate, with his counsel Advocate Thabani Masuku telling the panel he has uncontrolled hypertension and is unfit to follow the proceedings; a period of spiritual seclusion described as inseparable from his identity; and an urgent High Court application filed the night before in Pretoria to interdict the subpoena and stop the commission using WhatsApp messages taken off his phone, set down for 6 October. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC did not dispute the medical certificate, which anticipates a return on 28 September, but opposed the rest: he called the timing of the court application self-created urgency, said pending court proceedings are not a basis for a postponement, and asked to lead documentary evidence in Sindane's absence so the day would not be lost. Masuku objected that putting private communications up provisionally is still publication, and that a man in bed cannot answer them. Per SABC News the chairperson reserved his ruling to Friday 25 September, and it went against Sindane: the ruling circulated that day dismissed the postponement and ordered, per IOL and the African News Agency, that 'the evidence of or concerning Oupa Jossiah Sindane must be led on Monday in whatever format'. Nothing about the underlying allegations was decided. Sindane has given no evidence to this commission, he denies the criminal charges, and he is presumed innocent.
Madlanga Commission - Day 177
Taxi owner Madoda 'Joe Ferrari' Sibanyoni returned to the Bridgette Mabandla Justice College under heavy security for the cross-examination set down three weeks ago, and it did not happen. The day went instead to his supplementary statement, and to his objections. He told the commission the material taken off his cellphone in the Kwaggafontein criminal case should not be used here, calling its appearance before the commission an abuse and a violation of his privacy and constitutional rights; he complained that the commission had drip-fed him evidence, sending more than 2,000 pages on 4 September, eighteen days after his own statement was due; and he said questions about the Moloto Road and Evergreen bus contracts and the Kwagga 20 proceedings fall outside the commission's mandate. On the substance he denied any improper relationship with the police, saying of the officers whose access codes were found for his Centurion estate that he had never associated with them for any improper motive or purpose, and he defended his dealings with the security company Gubis85 Solutions, which he said was paid R145,000 a month including VAT to protect his taxi association from March 2024 and which gave him a bakkie worth about R1 million as a gift. Cross-examination was postponed to a date not yet determined. Every allegation touching him remains untested and he is presumed innocent.
Madlanga Commission - Day 176
The commission stepped back from the individual cases to the machinery that is supposed to keep the state honest. Its witness was Professor Somadoda Fikeni, chairperson of the Public Service Commission, the Chapter 10 body that monitors and investigates public administration, who gave evidence at the Bridgette Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria two days after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a new Public Service Commission Act into law. His theme was implementation. 'South Africa is a cemetery of best policies in the world, but they are not implemented,' he told the commission, per IOL, and he described what he called a political economy of inefficiency, in which the unwillingness to implement is dressed up as a facade of wanting to. He said vetting in South Africa is often not taken seriously and falls short of the standards applied elsewhere, supported the call made the day before by the head of Correctional Services for frontline officials across the criminal justice system to be vetted, and argued that in the most unequal society in the world, officials at the lower levels are more vulnerable to being enticed, so their conditions of service and their legal protection against political interference matter. It was evidence about systems, not about any individual, and nothing in it is an allegation against a named person.
Madlanga Commission - Day 175
A year to the day after Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi took the stand as its first witness, the commission paused to take stock and then went somewhere it had not yet gone in earnest: the prisons. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga read a short statement saying that, while definitive findings wait for the final report, the evidence so far shows indications of serious criminality inside the criminal justice system. Then the National Commissioner of Correctional Services, Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, described prison gangs that groom officials with small favours, organise escapes and reach witnesses beyond the walls, told the commission that Thabo Bester had repeatedly tried to see him alone, and relayed an inmate's account that officers told him to escape from Rooigrond Maximum Correctional Centre this month or be killed, so that he would stop naming them in court.
Madlanga Commission - Day 174
After a day inside one metro police department, the commission went up a level and asked a question it will have to answer in its report: once you accept that a criminal justice system has been infiltrated, what do you actually do about it? Its witness was Laura Pop, a senior financial sector specialist at the World Bank who has worked on anti-corruption and asset recovery in more than twenty countries, including South Africa, and who works alongside the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Her evidence, given at the Bridgette Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria, was that the ordinary tools are not enough. Per TimesLIVE: 'Criminal investigations or disciplinary investigations use some of the bodies that are already there, and what happens is that some countries have seen that these measures are not sufficient.' Two reasons, both of which this commission has watched happen. The first is capture of the remedy itself: 'The bodies tasked with conducting the disciplinary hearings could themselves become captured, or their approach and practice might not be a match for the challenge.' The second is time: 'It can take years to have a criminal case against a single corrupt criminal justice officer adjudicated.' Pop took the panel through what four countries did instead, per SABC News: judicial vetting in Kenya, pre-vetting in Moldova, hybrid assessment bodies combining civil society and international experts in Ukraine, and the stricter Albanian model. Moldova's numbers were the ones she dwelt on. Of the candidates put through the pre-vetting of the country's judicial self-governance bodies, an assessment of financial integrity, tax compliance and ethical conduct, '38% of the candidates passed', which she called the lowest passing rate of her examples, adding that 'the consequences for this vetting were not particularly serious when compared to the Albanian case'. Her recommendation for South Africa, per Eyewitness News, TimesLIVE and Inside Politics, was a once-off legally entrenched integrity evaluation of senior and high-risk officials across the criminal justice system, described in the reporting as a deep cleaning exercise, that would have to be independent, tightly defined and hedged with strong legal safeguards. Most of her afternoon went to the plumbing that makes such an exercise work: financial disclosure that can be verified rather than merely filed. Per Eyewitness News she told the commission the evaluating body 'must have the power to compel the production of financial and other necessary records from third-party repositories without relying on the evaluated individual to produce them voluntarily', and that verification must be able to extend to the assets and income of family members and third parties within the limits required to establish unjustified wealth. Her worked example was the loan that never gets checked: 'Because sometimes the people who gave the loans are not subject to asset declarations. They weren't included in the asset declaration of the official; they're just as the source. So the commission needs to be able to go to the tax authority or, you know, to get records to see if this person could even afford to provide this loan.' She recommended working with the South African Revenue Service, and said that anyone refusing an assessment should face dismissal. Per SABC News her blunt line on training was: 'You can't train people who don't have integrity.' This was expert evidence about systems, not testimony about any individual, and it makes no allegation against anyone.
Madlanga Commission - Day 173
The commission came back from its recess a day later than planned, and it came back on a police service it had barely touched. For the first time the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department was the subject rather than a bit part, and evidence leader Advocate Thabang Pooe ran two witnesses from inside the department. In the morning Superintendent Elmarie de Beer, head of the JMPD's internal affairs unit, described what her investigators keep running into: officers who use unofficial informants to find businesses moving large amounts of cash or precious metals, and then intercept the cash or the goods. Per Eyewitness News she put the reach of it plainly - 'So the conduct is not confined to JMPD based on the cases. It typically involved collaboration between JMPD officers, SAPS members, Hawks members, and the ultimate buyer and the sellers.' She named Superintendent Phineas Manyama of the Tactical Response Unit, a decorated officer on the department's own account, as someone who used departmental resources for his own benefit and kept crime patrols out of parts of the city: 'There are certain areas where TRU members, as soon as they go into those areas, especially where the crime hotspots or the syndicates operate, as soon as JMPD TRU members enter the parameters of that specific area, they are being phoned and told, What are you doing there? Get out.' Manyama retired in April 2026, as her unit was preparing disciplinary charges against him. De Beer also told the panel her own investigators are targeted and threatened, and that the officers they charge turn around and file grievances against them. In the afternoon the register narrowed to one man. Sergeant Rico van Wyk of the JMPD K9 unit played the commission CCTV footage of the kidnapping of a child in Johannesburg in 2021, for which he said R5 million was extorted from the child's father, and told the panel he recognised two of the men on his own shift: 'Upon viewing the video, I identified two of the individuals depicted therein as Officers Johannes Mokgatle and Zwelibanzi Mgujulwa.' He said neither man denied being in the video, and neither explained it. Mokgatle is the warrant officer the commission has already heard was linked to murder-accused businessman Katiso 'KT' Molefe. Van Wyk also described a fleet-tracking employee, now dead, who told him there was no data on a vehicle he was trying to trace, and Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga supplied the other possibility: 'I wanted to say another possibility is that she did not tell you the truth.' Van Wyk answered, 'Possibility is there, Commissioner.' Nothing here is a finding. Every allegation is untested, Manyama, Mokgatle and Mgujulwa have not answered any of it on the public record, and all are presumed innocent.
Madlanga Commission - Day 172
The last public sitting before the commission's recess ran two witnesses and two registers. In the morning retired Hawks national head Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya concluded the evidence he began on 27 August, and evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube put a photograph in front of him. It had been recovered from the phone of murder-accused businessman Katiso 'KT' Molefe, and the commission's evidence is that it shows five men it has been calling the 'Big Five': Molefe himself, private security businessman Steve Motsumi, Ignatius Mothakathi, the man known as 'King Nyambose' - reported by SABC News and EWN as Andrew 'Boy' Mthethwa and by TimesLIVE and The Citizen as Jabu Mthethwa - and the late taxi boss Jotham 'Mswazi' Msibi. Lebeya said he knew none of it. 'I have no knowledge of that organised criminal grouping at all, and I even doubt if it is registered as an organised crime project,' he told the panel, per the African News Agency, and of the men in the picture: 'I don't think that it is strange that we do not know all people in South Africa. I do not know them.' The difficulty was a WhatsApp message. On 6 December 2024, the night Molefe was arrested at Sandhurst and Hawks units unexpectedly arrived, the businessman who uses the name Malcolm X wrote to Lebeya: 'Thank you for sending people who verified these gentlemen are policemen and King Nyambose really appreciates all your efforts general.' Lebeya's evidence, per The Citizen, was that he did not engage with it - 'I was not really interested in the message itself' and 'I did not ask him who is this King Nyambose' - and chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga would not leave it there: 'What were you being thanked for? And who on Earth is this Nyambose?' Segeels-Ncube put the pattern to him plainly: 'You were the head of the DPCI and there have been generals that have come before the commission who have been afraid to mention some of these individuals. I just find it bizarre that you do not know any of these individuals.' Lebeya also confirmed he had known since October 2023 that Malcolm X had been arrested with three police officers on corruption and extortion allegations. He closed on his own record: 'I am incorruptible.' In the afternoon the register changed completely. Dr Mark Shaw, executive director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, gave expert evidence placing everything the commission has heard this year inside an international measurement. Per EWN and SABC News, he told the panel that 'South Africa is in the top 5% of all countries in the world in respect of criminal markets and actors as measured by the index', that on a survey of 193 countries South Africa ranks seventh globally for organised crime, that its homicide rate exceeds Colombia's and Mexico's and now resembles Ecuador's, and that the country's criminal markets run from drug trafficking and extortion to financial crime, illicit trade and cybercrime. He tied the ranking to state capture and to criminal infiltration of state institutions, and pointed to what other jurisdictions did about it, including Italy's restructuring of its anti-mafia prosecution system and legislation on the unexplained wealth of public officials. The commission then rose. It goes into recess from 3 to 11 September and resumes on Monday 14 September. Nothing here is a finding. The 'Big Five' remains an alleged network, every person named in the photograph is presumed innocent, Lebeya denies wrongdoing, and none of it has been tested in any court.
Questions
Madlanga Commission schedule: common questions
When does the Madlanga Commission sit?
The Madlanga Commission sits on weekdays during its hearing blocks, usually from mid-morning with a tea and lunch adjournment, often running eight to ten hours. The latest recorded sitting was Day 181 on 30 Sep 2026. Exact upcoming dates are set by the Commission and announced on its official roll.
Where is the Madlanga Commission held?
Hearings are held in Pretoria, at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College, where the Chairperson and commissioners receive evidence.
How many days has the Madlanga Commission sat?
181 hearing days are recorded in this archive so far, the most recent being Day 181 (30 Sep 2026).
When must the Madlanga Commission report, and when does evidence close?
The final report to President Cyril Ramaphosa is due on Monday 25 January 2027. That date was set on 19 September 2026, when the Presidency extended the deadline from 16 November 2026 and described the move as the final extension; the Commission was originally to report by 31 August 2026. Public evidence does not close on 2 October 2026, the date carried in earlier reporting: in a statement of 30 September 2026 the Commission said it would not sit on 2 October, would sit in camera for the two weeks from 5 October, and would resume public hearings on 9 November 2026, after the local government elections of 4 November. Two interim reports have already gone to the President, in December 2025 and May 2026.
What is left for the Madlanga Commission to hear?
Per the Commission's statement of 30 September 2026, it will finish the balance of Phase Two in the remaining months of 2026, including the evidence of Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, before Phase Three opens with Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi returning to the witness stand. The evidence of Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala, who was subpoenaed on 25 September 2026, has been postponed to 14 December 2026. A two-day seminar is to be held in October in preparation for drafting the final report, and the Commission has stopped accepting new submissions through its hotline and other platforms, although it will still take information on matters already with its evidence leaders and investigators.
Can I follow the Madlanga Commission live or today?
Yes. This archive turns each day's testimony into a readable record. See who is on the stand now on the home page, the newest hearing days and documents on the Latest page, and the full day-by-day chronicle under Hearings.
Covering 13 months of hearings, this is part of The Madlanga Commission public-record archive - follow the latest day, the case files, and the witnesses.