By Johnathan Paoli
Suspended Deputy National Police Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya on Friday conceded that the handling of 121 case dockets belonging to the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) inevitably disrupted investigations.
Retired judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga, who is chairing the commission, pressed Sibiya on his January 2025 correspondence and subsequent instructions that resulted in the dockets being removed from investigators, stored in a repository, and later reassigned.
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Sibiya denied that the letter amounted to an implementation plan for disbanding the PKTT.
“I will simply not agree that there was a travesty of justice,” he said.
However, Madlanga pointed out that Sibiya had explicitly referred to an “implementation plan” in the letter.
Under questioning, Sibiya confirmed that a “repository” meant a place of storage and that PKTT dockets were intended to be kept there after being identified by Acting Deputy National Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Khosi Senthumule.
He further accepted that, while stored, the dockets would not be accessible to detectives.
Sibiya nevertheless denied that this meant investigations could not continue.
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He insisted the plan was always for the dockets to be returned to KwaZulu-Natal, adding that KZN police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had refused to accept them following an audit at SAPS head office.
But he conceded that, during the period of storage, “it was inevitable” that investigations would be disrupted.
Madlanga emphasised that disruption was the central issue.
Sibiya admitted that PKTT cases not already on the court roll would have been reassigned to new investigators, who would have needed time to familiarise themselves with complex dockets.
When Madlanga put it to him that the combined effect of storage and reassignment meant “disruption was simply inevitable”, Sibiya initially agreed but then attempted to retreat from that concession.
“At least it should be a plus on my side, chair…I’m trying to at all times be mindful that we shouldn’t lose the fact that dockets must be attended to,” Sibiya said.
Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim challenged Sibiya’s insistence that he never instructed the 121 PKTT dockets to be taken to Pretoria.
She pointed to a 21 February 2025 letter in which Sibiya directed Senthumule to engage Crime Intelligence head, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, to hand over “all documentation relevant to the PKTT”.
Sibiya conceded there was such an instruction but argued the handover could have occurred in KZN.
Hassim said it remained unclear how that would have worked in practice.
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Sibiya agreed with Senthumule’s evidence that she had been placed under pressure to take possession of the dockets, but complained that he was “being punished for being effective”.
He said he was acting on the directive of then Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and the instructions of National Police Commissioner, General Fannie Masemola.
Questioned about the 11 days it took to “inspect” the 121 dockets, Sibiya conceded that no investigation could be done during that period, though he insisted there was “nothing untoward” about it.
Hassim countered that Sibiya could not have known the status of the investigations at the time he issued his instructions, as the inspection report he relied on was dated 6 June 2025.
Sibiya initially accepted this, then denied it, saying he had management meetings and was updated on a daily basis about what was going on.
Hassim put it squarely to Sibiya that as an objective fact, what happened here was very serious and it constituted interference with the investigation of active cases.
The commission also examined why Sibiya went beyond an agreed disbandment plan, which stipulated that 114 PKTT dockets already on the court roll would remain with the task team.
Under pressure, Sibiya eventually conceded that he had not implemented the agreed plan but was rather implementing his own plan.
Madlanga said that safeguards Sibiya claimed to have introduced were effectively meaningless, as the central repository prevented access to dockets and halted investigations.
The commission continues.
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