Madlanga Commission | New witness expected today

[00:00:00]The Madlanga Commission continues with the drugs theme this week, focusing on further evidence related to both the Port Shepston in Quazulu Natal and Eritton and Koeng incidents over the next few days. But for more on this, we cross now to SABC news reporter Kenny Mapanga, who's our eyes and ears at this commission. Kenny, good morning. And of course uh you know we've heard so much about these two drug raids and of course how they came about the one being described totally as a comedy of errors but talk to us about what we can expect today.

[00:00:38]>> Indeed. Uh good morning to you Sakina and to the viewers at home. We expect a new witness to take the stand this morning at 9:30 a.m. as it continues with this drugstream evidence, if we could put it that way, that is intrinsically linked and will give a commission an understanding as to the extent to which these alleged criminal cartels had infiltrated the criminal justice system. And the key tools to answering this question seems to be the Ispingo drug bust, which is later known as the Port Shepton case of uh stolen cocaine. And then of course the July 2021 Eritan drug bus where we left off last week was with uh Chief Samuel Mashaba who came and took the stand about his particular role in the Eritan drug bust and I think the commission made some advancements with respect to this particular evidence because it seems that the first responders have more questions to answer to because at the very least what the commission was able to do through the evidence of Mashaba was dismantle this contention that he makes that he received received a tip off uh from Dumeongu that is someone who was first described as an informant. However, further probing revealed that that particular version is something that won't necessarily stand because previous messaging, if I could put it that way, that is the WhatsApps and the trema messaging give a greater role to Dumangu and we know that he is expected to come before the commission tomorrow to explain his role. But it seems or rather the evidence suggests that he is allegedly involved with the importation and the transportation of drugs. So in that drug trafficking space and it is through that particular evidence that you'll get an understanding as to who these drugs belong to where they were intended to go and you'll probably make sense of all the chaotic actions of all the police officers that responded to the scene because it seems at this stage Sakina that if you assess the incidents that is the Port Shepston and the Eritton it seems that in the latter there are no saints in that particular matter and we do not know that there's something off about the Port Shiftton incident, but it's about establishing what really was taking place at the Eritton bus because we know that both had the same suppliers and allegedly were coming from the same port and being moved with one going to Port Shepston and of course the other going into Johannesburg. So, we expect the commission to continue to try to get to the bottom of these events and then hopefully get to the true question of who these drugs allegedly belong to and whether or not those cops were allegedly complicit in the act of alleged drug trafficking.