Madlanga Commission Wrap| R300M Aeroton cocaine bust: a turf war among cops? & Mogotsi's recusal bid

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]this time having Kenny Mapanga with us in studio to unpack all the latest at the Madanga Commission of Inquiry. It would seem Kenny, a lot being said about Bra Morti's appearance this week, but appearing very KY. What transpired this week?

[00:00:14]>> Indeed. Well, we continued with the Eritan drug bus and I think we're still left even more confused than when we started as more witnesses take the box and produced more questions than answers as to what exactly may have taken place there at the Eritan Drug Bus. speak to two analysts to try and find out whether that was a turf war amongst cops or not.

[00:00:33]Then of course Brahma Makottzi returned to the probe but not to answer questions but rather to exercise his right to remain silent and that was followed by his arrest which has little to do with the testimony at the commission but has everything to do with that incident where he is accused of staging that hit on himself. So we'll discuss all those details. We have 30 minutes to unpack all of that drama uh in the past week and then of course the commission will take that slight recess with respect to preparing that second interim report.

[00:01:15]The Madanga Commission drew the curtains on this leg of public hearings with more evidence on the chaotic cocaine drug bust. But as more witnesses took to the witness box, this question becomes, was this operation about crime fighting or were cops allegedly in a turf war over the drugs worth 300 million rands? And Brown Makorti returned to the probe but chose to remain silent after his recusal bid against advocate Matthew Choskerson SC fell flat. I'm Cany Manga and this is the Madlanga rap.

[00:01:46]>> You were clueless and you knew that you were clueless. That's what I think.

[00:01:51]>> Mashaba was clueless and you must have known that he too was clueless.

[00:01:55]>> Commissioner, >> what on earth were you doing handling any of the objects there, the container and the contents?

[00:02:04]>> We were innocently trying to do this.

[00:02:08]>> What it indicates is there was no good intentions on your part to get these drugs to be properly dealt with as prescribed by the law. In fact, you had ulterior motives about putting them in that van and you were going to take them where they would not be accounted for.

[00:02:27]>> Major General Khan asked me who the trucks belong to and I told him that people say they belong to him and he laughed. He told me that he could see that I was doing an honest job and I requested if he could submit a statement as there was a disciplinary hearing against me for the same case.

[00:02:47]The Eritin drug bust remained in focus before the probe. This time from the two sets of officers that responded to the drugs. At the outset, it appeared that three officers, a chief traffic officer and two SAPs officers were trying to seize the drugs, but not for a good purpose.

[00:03:06]>> During the time the officers were busy at the scene, a call was made to 101 alleging hijacking of a truck by bogus police. 101 dispatched officers from Bison's police station. Bison's police station approached these officers on the scene and there seemed to have been a disagreement regarding where the exhibits and the suspects would be taken.

[00:03:29]There were also allegations that the three officers on scene had loaded the drugs on the scene in order to leave with the drugs >> errors.

[00:03:40]The evidence would later show that chief traffic officer Samuel Mashaba, warrant officer Marumu Makane and warrant officer Bu Pakula did not have the skills to handle a scene of this nature.

[00:03:53]>> You were clueless and you knew that you were clueless.

[00:03:56]>> That's correct.

[00:03:57]>> Mashaba was clueless and you must have known that he too was clueless.

[00:04:03]>> Correct.

[00:04:04]>> Correct. Commissioner, >> what on earth were you doing handling any any of the objects there, the container and the contents? What on earth were you doing?

[00:04:18]>> Uh, Commissioner, uh, we were innocently trying to do uh to process the scene.

[00:04:27]Pakula and Mahane struggled to explain their presence at the scene and the comedy of errors in their actions which effectively contaminated the scene and suggested an improper motive.

[00:04:40]>> What it indicates I want to suggest to you, what it indicates is there was no good intentions on your part to get these drugs to be properly dealt with as prescribed by the law. In fact, you had ulterior motives about putting them in that vein and you were going to take them where they would not be accounted for.

[00:05:02]>> The plot thickened as the hawks officer who arrested Makane Mashab Pukal and the informant Tumelu took the stand. This is his contention that he arrested them for allegedly trying to steal the drugs was only mentioned by officers who were not on the scene.

[00:05:18]And on my study of this docket, the people who mentioned the baky trying to leave uh are not the ones that were there at the time.

[00:05:33]So for example, Moboya also hears it third hand that the buggy was trying to leave. Maybe another important person to note is Walker from from Scanya who arrives at the same time with do and Makami.

[00:05:51]>> Yes, >> he too mentions nothing about the the truck trying to leave the baky trying to leave.

[00:05:59]>> Lieutenant Colonel Siba also does not mention crime intelligence official Major General Faras Khan at the scene in his statement. a move the probe found suspicious in light of the whispers around Khan and this consignment.

[00:06:15]>> Major General Khan asked me who the drugs belong to and I told him that people say they belong to him and he laughed. He told me that he could see that I was doing an honest job and I requested if he could submit a statement as there was a disciplinary hearing against me for the same case.

[00:06:33]The chaos and contradictions that surrounds the July 2021 drug bust of cocaine raises the question, was this poor negligence or was there a possible turf war among cops over this consignment? To unpack this, we are joined by Aron Heman, senior analyst at the global initiative and Chad Thomas, the CEO of IRS forensic investigations.

[00:06:54]Aron and Chad, thank you so much for joining us uh this afternoon on connecting the dots. We've been looking at this evidence which is quite confusing and has uh produced more questions than answers. I think uh Aaron we can start with you with the fact that not a single prescript in terms of the handling of narcotics was followed at the scene of the Eritton drug bus. Is it normal for a traffic officer to embark on this kind of an operation within the context of the evidence you've heard before the Madanga Commission?

[00:07:27]Thank you very much uh Kenny and uh good afternoon to your viewers. Um well I think uh it's it's almost useless asking that question because we starting to see a pattern emerge uh in the Madlanga Commission with regards to the police's handling of large um consignments of cocaine. Uh we heard last week um that you know cocaine was stolen from the hawks officers. Again we had the same sort of explanation being given uh by police of just um pure negligence. But what we are seeing here and what we are hearing from the Madlanga Commission is similar to what we heard at the Zonda Commission. There are cracks in our system that allow powerful and nefarious actors into the engine room of our state and political structures. And during the Zordo Commission, we heard how the Guptas and other private business interests captured the state and also tried to influence political outcomes by manipulating internal um party uh political structures. And um we had the commission made its recommendations and for the most part there hasn't been accountability or changes to the system and the systematic problems that makes state capture possible in the first place. In other words, our system is still vulnerable and drug trafficking syndicates and drug dealers have tapped into the same corrupt networks that allowed the Guptas to end. If you can control the outcomes of an inter internal party election, for example, um of a popular political party, it doesn't have to be the ruling party, you can get people friendly in the state to your cause behind the levers of power. And this is how organized crime networks um capture national ministers, provincial ministers, and city officials. And if you control these people, um, our system does not have appropriate firewalls that stops you from controlling other state structures and state officials.

[00:09:36]>> Indeed. And I just want to bring Chad in on this chief traffic officer who basically starts the chain of events in the response to this interception of the drugs worth 300 million rand. We see that he calls on two officers. uh one that is an administrative cop and then they bypass all of those police stations in the area and reach out to a cop in Ptoria from the National Interventional Unit in order to assist them with this operation. Was this a means to try and use a SAP's camouflage in order to intercept those particular jobs? Because it is understood that the backup must come from those officers who are in the surrounding areas. But it seems that here Mashaba turned to a cop that does the administrative duty such as the paperwork and then of course a cop all the way in Ptoria which is very far from this Eritan facility in Johannesburg.

[00:10:30]>> Very good afternoon and thank you for the question. Um when it comes to something like this the there's many things that police rely on. There's standard operating procedures, there's standing orders and of course there's national directives. When it comes to a scene of this magnitude, there is a chain of command to follow as well as protocols and processes that are in place and the most important thing would have been to contact the duty officer.

[00:10:54]The duty officer would have come out and the duty officer would have made a decision on the way forward. Um, listening to Colonel Francois Stain's testimony when he eventually arrived on the scene and he's an experienced narcotics officer who's based with the sunup component of of the DPCI. He said it was chaotic. He said there was over 50 members that had had then arrived. So somehow word leaked out once these members who seem to be involved in something nefarious by calling the wrong people, calling people that were coasting, but people that are not aligned with Sunup, not aligned with the local criminal record center, the LCRC, who would deploy the uh members from from the forensics division to process the scene. It seems that once word got out, everybody responded to the scene, which is understandable when you hear that there's almost three quarters of a ton of of cocaine at a scene. It's a once in a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of police officers to actually see this and witness this. But it just shows us that there was absolutely no control of the scene. Processes were not followed.

[00:11:52]The national directive in terms of the way in which a crime scene should be managed was not followed. And one has to ask oneself the question, what is somebody from the traffic or metro police doing trying to control a scene?

[00:12:06]Calling junior members out from SAPS are known to him. Um whereas they don't have the investigative capacity nor do they have the forensic training to manage a crime scene of this magnitude. M and speaking of all the responders, Aon Pakula made an interesting statement in his uh statement before the commission where he stated that he had a conversation with uh crime intelligence official Major General Khan after the incident and he was present uh we've learned through evidence at that particular scene and he stated that there were whispers amongst the police that the drugs allegedly belonged to Khan. What do you make of those particular sentiments?

[00:12:48]Well, I mean whether he actually said what he had said uh to Khan in that interview, I think that that is still um evidence being led before the commission. And you hear these allegations all the time um of you know factions if we could call it that but different uh um stakeholders or or interested parties in the police that are making allegations against uh against other police officers, senior police officers, junior police officers of allegations of interference. Um, and it I mean what what value judgment can we make of of him stating to Khan that the these are your drugs, this is your cocaine?

[00:13:35]Um, I have doubts as to whether um the cocaine would have belonged to Khan himself. Uh, trafficking syndicates, they use police and state officials as part of the infrastructure. Um I have not yet heard that uh state officials themselves are the actual trafficking syndicate.

[00:13:57]>> Indeed. And I think the burning question for both of our analysts is were any of these cops that responded to the scene being genuine because of the comedy of errors that followed that scene? Or was this actually a possible turf war amongst cops to ensure that they could take uh possession of those particular high-v value exhibits?

[00:14:25]is that question um you can go for it first.

[00:14:29]>> You want to answer that?

[00:14:31]>> All right. Um the the the rumor mongering, the speculation, the innuendo and the inference has been made um by certain members. It's almost if they want to protect themselves because as Aaron pointed out, there's this factionalism within the police and there are these these these different narratives that are at play. Anybody knows the value of cocaine. Doesn't matter whether you're a constable or a general. And if those people that arrived at the scene had bad intentions and they want to call their connections out to try and dispose of this cocaine through their connections, that's was probably what may have been going through their minds. The fact that General Caval was on scene is not unusual. He is the provincial head of the director of priority crime investigations of which Senate the subnarcotics enforcement bureau forms part of. Um this happened in Ken. you would expect the head of the hawks to be there for such a significant um bust of of of of drugs, such a huge quantity of drugs. At the time, uh Major General Khan was the head of county intelligence for the National Crime Intelligence Office. He's also based in Koeng. He would have also got wind of this and he would have also come out there. There's there's nothing suspicious about having senior members on the scene when you're talking about a scene with this kind of quantity of drugs. What was suspicious is how it was handled initially and who was found to be on the scene and why those members were then arrested. And they were arrested on Khan's instructions because Khan found that there was something very wrong with a crime scene that's been led by a traffic official and two junior members, non-commission members that have been called by him that have not followed the processes and protocols, have not followed any directives or national directives. They haven't called out the LCRC. They haven't called out the the duty officer. The the scene has not been processed correctly. And of course, this one was this leads to the speculation that we're now talking about today.

[00:16:18]>> And just quickly, uh we have run out of time. Aron, any last sentiments on that burning question?

[00:16:25]So I think the last point is that we just have to look at this being a symptom of a larger issue playing out where South Africa is a nodal point a logistics hub for for cocaine traffickers between Latin America and destinations like Australia. All of this that we're hearing from the Mlanga Commission plays out within that background. cops that are bought, politicians that are bought, those people are just functionaries within a broader logistics chain. And um regardless of what's being said right here, there's somebody's at fault. But I think it's going to what we just should understand, what the public should understand is what's happening here is the capture of certain sectors of the state by international cocaine trafficking syndicates.

[00:17:13]>> All right, we'll leave it there. That's Chad Thomas and Aron Herman who are sharing their expert analysis on what could have possibly gone wrong at the Eritton drug bus. Well, it's up to the commission to make sense of the chaos in that particular scene. But let's hear your thoughts on this operation which produced more questions than answers.

[00:17:37]Yes, I believe so that the three officers might be linked to the crime scene as an inside job because it's actually not possible that if you going to report to the crime scene, now you actually want to return the drugs back to the owner, which means you actually knew what was going on and you're part of the deal that's going on. I think that police are in cows with drug dealers because um it's so hard to locate drug dealers and drug dealers are getting many and many and many of them are selling drugs here.

[00:18:09]>> Drug dealers and the police are being involved together because um as we can see there are people people who are inside the prison or who are arrested they are being connected together. How come they have drugs inside the prison w? So basically I think these people are being connected together.

[00:18:32]While the sentiments are clear from the public on this one that these efforts were allegedly a collective effort. Now Northwest businessman and alleged political fixer Brown Mahorty returned to the probe but he refused to incriminate himself. Legal analyst Elton Hart joins us after the break to unpack Mahort's posture before the probe.

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[00:19:33]>> For hours, days, weeks, and months, South Africans remain glued to their screens, watching explosive revelations that shake the foundations of our democracy. Commissions, inquiries, court battles, all defining features of South Africa's democratic journey. But as a nation searches for its way back to its constitutional values, is the law truly a tool for justice? And if not, where does that leave ordinary South Africans?

[00:20:08]Connecting the relationship among the law, the state, politics, power, and their impact on you and me.

[00:20:19]This is Case in Point every Thursday 8 to 9:00 p.m.

[00:20:24]>> Case in Point only on SABC News and SABC Plus and welcome back. Northwest businessman Brown Mahorti returned to the probe on Friday with the hopes of recusing advocate Charlesen SC from his testimony.

[00:20:51]Mhorti claimed that Charusan allegedly asked him to give him false evidence against Sullean Karim in exchange for immunity. Brown submitted WhatsApp exchanges and phone call records to support his claim. Mhorti however omitted information and misrepresented his electronic records in a manner which failed to show that Morti initiated the communications and he on his own offered to give up information on Kareem. His lawyers ultimately had to withdraw the damaging claim against Toscerson which isn't in the text and the application was subsequently dismissed.

[00:21:25]The probe sought clarity on testimony that contradicts Brown's version particularly his claims of being a contact agent. The evidence suggests that Brown may have met with Sabia before the January 8th and that he was not interacting with alleged cartel member Vimuziki Matlala as a contact agent, but rather was working with him to allegedly target intelligence head Lieutenant General Dumsani Kumalo. But Brown refused to answer these questions.

[00:21:54]>> Why were you sharing this information with Mr. Matla?

[00:22:01]I'm not going to incriminate myself.

[00:22:05]>> Now to unpack this, we are joined by legal analyst Elton Hart from the U.J.

[00:22:09]Law Clinic on the line. Alton Hart, welcome to Connecting the Dots and thank you for joining us.

[00:22:15]>> Good afternoon, good afternoon viewers and listeners.

[00:22:18]>> Indeed, it seems that Brown wanted to use the privilege against selfinccrimination, which is actually a very real protection, but it seems here it was used quite loosely.

[00:22:28]So the thing is like driver tried to hide behind the secret of selfinccriminating himself but you already volunteered information on a previous occasion and now you're saying that you are not going to answer and you now open yourself up for possibly defending the answer of justice and also um maybe to say perjury because you raise information under oath to say that you are a contact agent. You are various people and various road players and here it is indicative from the evidence that in the possession of the evidence leaders that you are actually giving and cooperating with a person of interest in the alleged corruption into the Cambisa hospital scandal. So he put himself in a spot of bother and I don't think hiding between uh between or behind the self-inccrimination effort is going to get in Scot because the regulations of the commission allows them to prefer criminal charges against him for not answering.

[00:23:26]>> Indeed Alton and when is it appropriate to invoke this principle in the context of the commission of inquiry?

[00:23:33]The thing is like there was evidence he was subpoena to he voluntarily first and once he also made that decision because sometimes you get witnesses that subpoena you can voluntarily but he can voluntarily seeming like a canary and now that he has been confronted with versions by the evidence leaders now he's saying he's not going to selfinccriminate himself you you came they didn't call you you volunteered to come there and give information you can't give information and tell the evidence leaders what information to test and what not to test. If the evidence leaders is there, they are not there to be your friend. They are there to make sure they get to the bottom of the robustly test whatever you say it's true because remember they have to make recommendations for criminal prosecution for some members of the South African population that is found wanting on evidence. So you can't now say no I'm not going to interminate myself because the mere fact that you say you're not going to interminate yourself means that you are not answering freely and honestly which is then going against the terms of record and the regulations of the commission >> and Alton just to speak about this uh claim that he didn't want to incriminate himself um these institutions that will be investigating a lot of these individuals still have to gather their own evidence in order to bring a matter to be prosecuted so Was this uh simply a futile exercise by Brown Mahodzi?

[00:24:58]>> I think it's a futile exercise by Brown Modi because remember now he has volunteered information. So he's he's pointed law enforcement agencies into certain direction. So clearly they will go throw those things but he's not off the hook cuz they will also look at his rowing and how he fits into the bigger picture of this panel to say that um why is he involved? was he actually sort of sort of facilitating and being an active participant in the uh corruption and bribery and whatever other scandals that comes with it. Let me just say the crime that comes with it whatever his testimony was a total currency. So what comes was that the the investigators when they're going to decide to preserve criminal charges on each individual count they will still need to go and do their homework to make sure that they got primma evidence to which they have to answer in the criminal court.

[00:25:52]>> And lastly Alton the commission still has to complete its work and give that final report on the 31st of August and of course we expect many more witnesses.

[00:26:01]How does this posture set the tone for future implicated persons who may not want to answer the questions that are directly put to them?

[00:26:09]>> No, the commission sends out a strong signal to say listen here, we're going to not tolerate people that don't want to answer. If we don't if you don't answer, then we're going to actually make a filing criminal proceedings or criminal charges be presided against you. Because remember, you take an oath to say I will speak the truth. I consider the oath as binding and I will speak nothing but the truth and that oath must be binding. You can't say no I'm not going to give self incriminating evidence. I'm not going to do that. Then it means now it becomes a hostile and then they have to treat you as such. But I think it sets a good tone and I think at the rate that the commission is going I don't think we'll have a police force left.

[00:26:48]>> Indeed. Alton Hart, thank you so much for your time. That was legal analyst Alton Hart unpacking that uh privilege against uh that incriminating evidence.

[00:26:57]Of course, now Brahma Mahort's problems are still many as he has since been arrested following that appearance and is set to appear in court on Monday for defeating the ends of justice by allegedly staging an attempt on his life. The commission will take a slight break in order to prepare the second interim report, but we will continue to give you analysis next week on Sunday at 4 p.m. on channel 404 as well as SABC3 on the highly important work of the commission.