Named as one of a 'group of five' businessmen, and his answer (Day 169)
The allegation Sibanyoni was subpoenaed to answer is that he is one of the businessmen in the syndicate Crime Intelligence calls the Big Five - a network alleged before this commission to manipulate police investigations, control taxi routes by violence, and extract money by extortion. Per EWN the link was made by suspended Sergeant Fannie Nkosi, who tied Sibanyoni to a 'group of five' businessmen, and the late Jotham Msibi is said to have asked Nkosi to investigate Sibanyoni's connection to taxi violence. Answering it on Day 169, Sibanyoni inverted the frame: he told the commission he was not a member of the network but its target, and that he had been reporting it to the police for years. He was reading a prepared statement and was not cross-examined. The allegation is untested, his answer is untested, and he is presumed innocent.
Two shootings, in 2006 and August 2022 (Day 169)
Sibanyoni told the commission that gunmen opened fire on him in 2006 and again in August 2022, and put the attacks at the centre of his account of himself: 'When gunmen opened fire upon me in 2006 and again in August 2022, it was not merely a man they shot; it was a husband and a father.' The second attack is the subject of a live prosecution rather than only of his testimony. Per the Daily Maverick and News24 the shooting happened on 10 August 2022 at the Centurion Golf and Country Club estate, shots were fired from a white BMW, and Sibanyoni was struck twice in the stomach. Vusimuzi 'Cat' Matlala, his wife Tsakane Matlala and three co-accused have pleaded not guilty to 25 charges including eleven counts of attempted murder; the trial began on 21 July 2026 and Sibanyoni is the state's first witness. All of the accused deny the charges and are presumed innocent.
What he alleges about the late Jotham Msibi (Day 169)
Sibanyoni named the late taxi mogul Jotham 'King Mswazi' Msibi as the source of the threat against him. He told the commission that the two had agreed to retire from the industry at 60 and that Msibi later told him 'we die in the business', which he understood as a threat; that when he confronted Msibi about the 2006 shooting, Msibi did not deny it but instead 'surrounded himself with individuals known in the taxi industry in the criminal connotation of the term Izinkabi', the isiZulu term for contract killers; and that the association between Msibi and both Katiso 'KT' Molefe and Vusimuzi Matlala left him fearing for his life. Per EWN he said Msibi's death in January 2024 brought relief because 'the source of the threat and so much suffering directed at me was gone', and that he was afterwards voted Msibi's successor as president of the taxi body. Msibi died in January 2024 and cannot answer any of this. It is one witness's untested account of a dead man's conduct.
The claim that two musicians were attacked because of him (Day 169)
Sibanyoni told the commission that the murder of Oupa 'DJ Sumbody' Sefoka, shot dead with an AK-47 in Woodmead, Johannesburg on 20 November 2022 together with two bodyguards, and the 2024 attempt on the life of Seunkie 'DJ Vettys' Mokubung, were attacks on people close to him rather than on the musicians themselves. Per EWN he said: 'The attempted life of DJ Vettys, and Mr Sefoka being killed, it was a matter of people that are close to me', and confirmed it when it was put back to him. He said he knew Mokubung socially and knew Sefoka through Sefoka's father, a member of the Pretoria Mabopane Petersburg Taxi Association whom he had known for about thirty years. The rifle used to kill Sefoka has been ballistically linked by the state to a series of other cases, including the attempt on Sibanyoni's own life. A shared weapon establishes a shared armoury or shared shooters; it does not by itself establish a shared motive. The claim is untested.
The warning he says he took to the police minister (Day 169)
Sibanyoni told the commission he did not stay silent about what he says he knew. Per EWN he approached then Police Minister Bheki Cele and asked for an inquiry into a cartel he says was killing taxi operators across Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal with the involvement of officials inside the South African Police Service, and the request was refused. The archive does not publish the words attributed to Cele's reply, which so far rest on a single aggregator and social posts rather than on two independent outlets or the commission's own record. Cele has not answered this account before the commission. It is untested.
Putco: a warning to the President, 350 blockades, four burned depots and an offer to buy (Day 181)
On 30 September 2026 the commission stopped putting single acts to Sibanyoni and put a sequence to him instead. Per The Citizen and IOL it played footage of a January 2024 African National Congress campaign event in KwaNdebele at which he addressed President Cyril Ramaphosa, with Minister Gwede Mantashe present, in support of a demand that local operators be given 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 Mail and Guardian and East Coast Radio the vehicle for the 30 percent demand was the Gijima Consortium Bus Service, which he said needed longer contracts to raise bank finance. Per Sowetan and TimesLIVE, Putco then counted more than 350 incidents between October 2024 and January 2025 in which taxi operators blocked its buses from working around KwaNdebele and KwaMhlanga. Per Sowetan, on the night of 27 January 2025 armed men held up the guards at Putco's Moloto depot, sprayed flammable liquid from 11.38pm and destroyed sixteen buses in under ten minutes on closed circuit footage, with another 35 burning elsewhere that night; per IOL four depots were hit, at Moloto, Wolwekraal, Siyabuswa and Vaalbank, staff were tied up, employees assaulted and one worker shot. Per Inside Politics and Eyewitness News, about 36 hours after the fires he messaged an associate about acquiring buses, and on 25 February 2025 Taxi Choice, the South African National Taxi Council's business arm which he chairs, sent Putco an unsolicited offer to buy a stake in or all of the company; per Eyewitness News, Putco rejected it and called the timing 'disturbingly calculated'. Chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC's proposition, per Inside Politics, is that these are not four events but one process aimed at bringing Putco to a price. Sibanyoni rejected it entirely: per Eyewitness News, 'I differ. I differ 100% with your findings', and per Sowetan, 'I differ with your findings, and if you understand it differently, it's unfortunate.' He said he did not know the scale of the blockades and that the taxis in the commission's video carried Mpumalanga plates while his members carry Gauteng and Limpopo plates; per Mail and Guardian that his dealings with the President and a Cabinet minister 'was conducted in relation to legitimate public and community matters'; per Inside Politics that 'my interference was not meant in a bad way'; and per SABC News that Taxi Choice's interest in Putco 'was forever there ... It has already been there for years.' Per SABC News the chairperson refused his suggestion that the questioning had become personal and said there was nothing wrong with the evidence leader or the commission's investigators consulting Putco. Nobody has been charged on this record over the depot fires, he denies any involvement in them, none of this has been tested, and he is presumed innocent.
The Shosholoza stokvel and the Putco contracts, and why he says they are out of bounds (Day 177)
Two of the strands the commission put to Sibanyoni on 21 September 2026 he declined to deal with on the merits, saying they fall outside its terms of reference and outside the Rule 10.6 notice he was served with. The first is the Shosholoza stokvel, an investment pool the commission put to him as a route for improper money. Per Sowetan he said 'the Shosholoza stokvel does not fall within the commission's terms of reference', described it as a legitimate pooling arrangement among eight members, one of them a security company director, and disputed the characterisation rather than the existence of the money; Sowetan reports that R30 million was found in it at one point. Per EWN he put the denial in terms: 'The commission appears to frame this stokvel as a vehicle for improper financial flows. I categorically deny this characterisation.' Per TimesLIVE he said the money was member contributions and year-end distributions from people in the taxi industry. The second is a set of questions about alleged irregularities in Putco bus contracts, which per Sowetan and TimesLIVE he said were background that could not found an adverse finding against him without proper notice. He also objected to his pending criminal docket being used as an exhibit at all, per Sowetan: 'The inclusion of a pending criminal docket as an exhibit before this commission is itself constitutionally problematic', and 'The commission is not a criminal court.' None of these objections was ruled on. A witness is entitled to take them and the chairperson decides them. Nothing here is a finding, and he is presumed innocent.
His objection to his own seized phone being used here (Day 177)
On 21 September 2026 Sibanyoni asked the commission not to rely on material extracted from his cellphone, which was seized in the Kwaggafontein criminal investigation in which he faces extortion and money laundering charges. Per TimesLIVE he told the panel: 'I submit that the appearance of my phone's content before this commission represents an absolute abuse and open-ended violation of my privacy and constitutional rights.' He reserved the right to bring an urgent court application, and objected separately to that material being aired in sittings he does not attend, on the basis that he cannot answer evidence put up in his absence. News24 led its live coverage of the day on the same objection. The commission has not ruled on it.
Five police access codes, and Sergeant Fannie Nkosi (Day 177)
Per Sowetan and TimesLIVE, the commission asked Sibanyoni to explain why five police officers held access codes to his Centurion estate. He said he did not know four of them personally, professionally or socially, and knew the fifth, Warrant Officer Bhokgolo Mahlangu, through family: his younger brother has a son in the Mahlangu family. His general answer was 'I have never associated with them for some improper motive or purpose.' Per EWN he described suspended organised crime unit Sergeant Fannie Nkosi, whose WhatsApp traffic has been led at length before this commission and who named him as one of a 'group of five' businessmen, as 'a social acquaintance, a mover and a shaker' who visited his home ten to twelve times socially, and said the messages from around December 2024 show only that 'sergeant Nkosi would indicate to me when he had news'. Nkosi has not answered this account. Both men are presumed innocent and none of it is tested.
Gubis85 Solutions: R145,000 a month, and a R1m bakkie (Day 177)
Per IOL and Sowetan, Sibanyoni told the commission that the security company Gubis85 Solutions has provided VIP protection to the Pretoria Mabopane Pietersburg Taxi Association and related entities since March 2024 at R145,000 a month including VAT, roughly R1.7 million a year, and that the same company gave him a bakkie worth about R1 million. Per IOL a Gubis85 letter of 1 March 2025 described the vehicle as recognition of 'the longstanding relationship and goodwill between Gubis85, myself and the Joe Sibanyoni Foundation' and stated that it was not consideration for a contract, favour, procurement opportunity or other commercial benefit. His account is that the protection answered credible threats to his life and the vehicle came out of a personal relationship with the company's owner. Gubis85 is separately alleged to have benefited from irregular payments and a multimillion rand City of Tshwane security contract awarded without proper authorisation, evaluation or oversight; Sibanyoni denied that any entity of his was used as a conduit for money from City of Tshwane or Tshwane Metro Police contracts. Nothing here has been tested and he is presumed innocent.
The procedural complaint, and the cross-examination that did not happen (Day 177)
Per The Citizen, Sibanyoni told the commission he had been drip-fed evidence: after filing his first statement on 17 August he was sent more than 2,000 pages on 4 September, eighteen days after his own deadline, a sequence he called a chronological inversion because it required him to answer before he could read. 'To simply take it for granted that one can and will always bear the cost of lawyers to draft statements in this manner is truly not appropriate,' he said. He also placed the Kwagga 20 proceedings, the Moloto Road matters and the Evergreen bus contracts outside the commission's mandate, and invoked the protection against self-incrimination on parts of the record that overlap with his criminal case. The cross-examination set down for the day did not proceed: per SABC News because his counsel was unavailable, per Newzroom Afrika because the commission had given him the bundles late. No new date has been announced.
His answer to the Moloto road evidence: a quarry deal, not a racket (Day 180)
On 29 September 2026 the cross-examination postponed since 21 September finally ran, and chief evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC put the alleged extortion of Dr Tengane Thomas Ntuli to Sibanyoni directly. His answer was a competing account of the same money. Per The Citizen he described a commercial partnership: Ntuli, a Middelburg mining businessman, held rights to a quarry that could supply aggregate stone to the R572 Moloto road upgrade through Ekukhanyeni but could not satisfy the requirement that 30 percent of the work go to local businesses, and Sibanyoni says he supplied that local standing and R900,000 of his own money. 'I contributed R900,000 to the business and to him', he told the commission, and 'Mr Ntuli will be to supply materials from the quarry based on my involvement for him to get the local content.' Per The Citizen the split started at 50/50 and moved to 60/40 in Ntuli's favour because Ntuli ran the quarry: 'he gets 60% because you are directly involved running the quarry, give me 40%.' On Day 179 the evidence leaders put the same 60/40 figure up as the shape of an extortion arrangement, alongside a case that R2.29 million passed between July 2021 and November 2025. Both readings are now on the commission's record and neither has been tested. He denies the criminal charges and is presumed innocent.
Putting the threatening message on his co-accused (Day 180)
The message the evidence leaders led on Day 179, sent after a payment was missed in July 2024 and reading 'I demand a response, within 48 hours, detailing why the operation should not be stopped', was put to Sibanyoni on Day 180. Per IOL and the African News Agency he denied sending it, instructing it or knowing about it: 'Ntuli and I had a good relationship, I never sent him any threatening message', and 'That's why the [project] was not stopped. I don't know why he wrote this way, it was not me.' Commissioner Advocate Sandile Khumalo SC asked whether that meant Oupa 'Bafana' Sindane had acted on his own, and he agreed: 'He [Sindane] was acting on his own.' Sindane is his co-accused in the Delmas matter arising from the same facts, has given no evidence to this commission, and has not answered this. It is one accused's untested account of another's conduct. Both men deny the charges and both are presumed innocent.
The legal bills of a convicted man, and the docket naming his nephew (Day 180)
Two strands ran past the tender evidence on Day 180. The first was money moving towards men already convicted in taxi related killings. Per Eyewitness News the WhatsApp traffic off Sindane's phone shows payments connected to at least two of them, and the one put to Sibanyoni by name was Calvin Gwabo Mahlangu. Per IOL, Chaskalson framed it as a pattern rather than a single payment, 'what these chats cumulatively suggest is that Sibanyoni and Sindane were involved in paying legal expenses', and Sibanyoni explained it as a family obligation: 'His family approached me ... his mother approached me to help.' He said the help was aimed at Mahlangu's mother, denied choosing the attorney or funding an appeal, and attributed the arrangements to Sindane. Funding another person's defence is lawful. The second strand was a confidential police docket concerning an alleged grouping the record calls the Kwaggafontein 20, said to be linked to more than twenty murders, which the commission has heard reached Sindane. Per Eyewitness News, Sibanyoni said he did not know how Sindane got it and had not been interested in its contents. The papers name an escaped suspect, Mandla Ntsweni, rendered Mtsweni in some reporting, whom Sibanyoni has identified in his own statement as his nephew, and whose whereabouts he says he recently reported to police. Per Eyewitness News and The Citizen, Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC did not accept the answer: 'I find it unbelievable that you were not interested in the information contained herein, as it relates at least to your nephew. It can't be; it's impossible.' A commissioner testing a witness's credibility is not a finding against him. Per Eyewitness News he objected to the exercise as a whole, 'if I were to be found guilty, I would blame Mr Chaskalson ... now he's trying me out', and per SABC News asked Chaskalson to stay off the Delmas prosecution and leave its merits to the courts. None of it is tested and he is presumed innocent.
Charged with extortion and money laundering; he denies it
Separately from the commission, Sibanyoni was arrested in Mpumalanga on 12 May 2026 with co-accused Mvimbi Masilela and Philemon Msiza. Per the Daily Maverick and TimesLIVE the state alleges that between 2022 and 2025 they unlawfully demanded more than R2.2 million in protection fees from a mining businessman, threatening to shut down his operations, and the charges are extortion and two counts of money laundering. He appeared in the Kwaggafontein Magistrates Court on 13 May 2026 and is represented by former National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shaun Abrahams. The case was later re-enrolled in the Delmas Magistrates Court, and per EWN it was postponed there on 1 September 2026 to 20 October after the defence said it had still not received the final docket or charge sheet; he and his co-accused remain on R70,000 bail each. The phone seized in that investigation is the phone whose contents he asked the commission not to use on Day 177. Nothing in that case has been tried. He denies the charges and is presumed innocent.
Day 177: the WhatsApp traffic with Bafana Sindane, and what izinkabi means
On Day 177 the evidence leaders took him through WhatsApp exchanges with Bafana Sindane, the KwaMhlanga taxi owner subpoenaed for Day 178, and read some of them as touching on izinkabi, a word that can mean contract killers. Per Business Day and the Mail and Guardian his answer was a definition: within the taxi industry, he said, izinkabi is used for the men who protect taxi bosses and their ranks, not for hitmen. Per Business Day he denied the underlying suggestion outright, 'I categorically deny that I have ever commissioned, employed, assessed or provided support to persons engaged in taxi violence.' Individual messages were put to him. On an August 2025 exchange in which he asked Sindane about 'baobe', per Business Day he said he was only establishing whether Sindane had information about the two men it named; this archive does not publish those names, because the men are private individuals who have answered nothing and are accused of nothing. On a message of 7 March 2025 reading 'The dog is dead', per Business Day and the Daily Maverick he said it referred to the shooting of a man called Mabonga, of the Money Talks association, in a police shootout, that 'the event was a police matter, not something I participated in or directed', and per Business Day he denied sending it. On a message of 25 June 2025 reading 'We are in charge of the streets', per Business Day he said it required context and related to daily operations, and per the Daily Maverick that it was about self-control while running. Per IOL he described Sindane as the man who had 'always been closest to me', and their dealings as peacekeeping and conflict resolution in the industry. Per the Daily Maverick he also rejected any association with the grouping the record calls The Farm. Two days later Sindane filed an urgent High Court application to stop the commission using these same messages, set down for 6 October 2026. The commission has put one reading on the messages and Sibanyoni has put another. Nothing here has been tested and he is presumed innocent.