By Johnathan Paoli
The Madlanga Commission heard harrowing testimony on Monday from Witness A, who described how the investigating team probing the 2024 murder of Q-Tech engineer Armand Swart operated under a constant sense of danger and intimidation.
According to Witness A, the team’s fears were validated after a threat assessment allegedly confirmed that their lives were in “extreme danger”.
“The purpose of the threat assessment was to evaluate the scale of threat that we were facing. We never received the results. Later, we learned that the threat level was high. We were feeling scared. We were feeling really, really scared,” Witness A testified.
From the moment of their first meeting with head of investigations, Major General Richard Shibiri, the officers felt uneasy.
Despite his deep unease, Witness A said he initially gave Shibiri “the benefit of the doubt.”
A week later, he and other members of the Swart team received an unexpected invitation to a party at what was described as “the white house on the hill” in Northcliff.
The invitation came from a police officer, but the venue belonged to Vusi Ndlala, a man known to SAPS from assisting in a previous case.
When they arrived, Witness A said they were surprised to find Shibiri there, “sitting on a couch, playing music from his phone”.
The general appeared relaxed but startled by their presence.
With hindsight, he viewed the encounter as “inappropriate” and possibly orchestrated.
What followed deepened the team’s sense of peril.
Ndlala allegedly told Witness A that one of the accused, Michael Pule Tau, a career policeman and a detective stationed at the Johannesburg Central police station, would make bail.
Indeed, Tau later secured bail of R10,000 after citing medical reasons.
For Witness A, this development confirmed that their investigation was being undermined by external forces.
By that stage, three of the original investigators had already withdrawn from the case without explanation.
Witness A and Witness B were the only two left.
He recounted several troubling irregularities in the case’s forensic handling.
The team, he said, suspected “possible tampering” in the ballistic evidence.
The initial report had omitted 15 cartridges recovered from Tau’s vehicle, even though the same weapons were believed to have been used in multiple other crimes.
Amid these mounting irregularities, the officers felt increasingly isolated.
They were unable to reach their commanding officer and eventually reported their fears to the head of detectives, General Mbuso Khumalo, and to the prosecutor, who formally requested protection for them and the case docket.
Witness A said they began carrying the Swart docket with them everywhere they went, fearing that it might be seized or destroyed.
Their fears were reinforced when the Cold Case Unit, an unlikely body to be involved in an active case, demanded that the Swart team hand over the file in December 2024.
“We refused because it was completely non-procedural,” Witness A told the commission.
The team’s anxiety reached a climax in early December, when Witness A was visited by members of a police protection unit.
In the weeks leading up to that arrest, the team had discovered WhatsApp messages between Molefe and an associate predicting that Tau would be granted bail.
When that prediction came true, they realised they were dealing with individuals who had deep connections within the justice system.
By then, Witness A said, the team no longer trusted General Shibiri, believing he might be complicit in efforts to derail the case.
As proceedings adjourned, it was clear that Witness A’s testimony painted a grim picture of investigators forced to choose between their duty and their safety.
The commission is expected to resume on Tuesday morning at 9am.
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