By Johnathan Paoli
The Madlanga Commission on Tuesday heard fresh evidence of irregularities in the initial ballistic report concerning firearms linked to the murder of Q Tech engineer Armand Swart – the same weapons allegedly used in the killings of musicians Oupa “DJ Sumbody” Sefoka and Hector “DJ Vintos” Buthelezi.
Testifying remotely due to training commitments, Captain Solomon Modisane, a senior forensic analyst at the South African Police Service (SAPS) Forensic Science Laboratory, told the commission that his analysis revealed a “common origin” between cartridge cases recovered at the four separate murder scenes.
Modisane was being questioned by Advocate Thabang Pooe.
“The same AK-47 was used in all these murders,” he said.
Modisane added that 9mm Parabellum cartridges recovered at the DJ Vintos scene were fired from the same Taurus pistol, with an obliterated serial number, later linked to the Swart killing.
The discovery directly connects the firearms used to assassinate Swart to multiple high-profile hits that had long seemed unrelated.
Modisane said he was “baffled” to discover that the Swart firearms had been examined in both Pretoria and Amanzimtoti, describing it as “bizarre” and suggesting it was the result of irregularities in the first Pretoria laboratory report.
He was later told that the duplication arose because Swart’s investigating officers had raised “certain irregularities” about the initial Pretoria findings, prompting a second independent analysis.
“There were suspicions of, how can I put it, of the integrity of the Pretoria laboratory. Maybe that’s why they sent it to us (in Amanzimtoti), not to them, to do the comparison,” he said.
According to his testimony, Modisane was working for the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) in KwaZulu-Natal when, on 30 December 2024, he received a request to compare the guns seized from Swart’s accused killers with weapons used in the DJ Sumbody, DJ Vintos and Don Tindleni cases.
At the time, he was already involved in a broader review of dormant KZN political murder cases involving AK-47 rifles.
He had previously compared those with 27 Pretoria cases but found no ballistic link.
When he began analysing the Swart firearms, however, the results were different.
Using microscopic comparisons of markings on fired cartridge cases, Modisane identified identical striation patterns, a forensic signature proving that the same firearms had been used across all four murders.
A significant part of Modisane’s evidence dealt with the obliterated serial number on the Taurus pistol.
He described the complex electromagnetic and chemical etching processes used to restore such numbers, which are critical in tracing a weapon’s ownership and criminal history.
He said that while a Pretoria-based analyst, Captain Itumeleng Makgotloe, failed to recover the Taurus serial number, ballistics experts in KwaZulu-Natal later succeeded.
He warned that when an analyst fails to recover a number, the next attempt becomes “much more difficult” because the weapon’s metal surface has already been damaged.
Commissioner Sandile Khumalo expressed concern that a KZN analyst had to handle a Gauteng case, asking why the work wasn’t done by the Silverton laboratory in Pretoria.
Modisane replied that investigators had specifically requested his involvement due to their doubts about the Pretoria lab.
He emphasised that he confined himself strictly to the comparison request, to avoid any perception of bias or overreach.
The commission will next hear from Captain Meldon Mkhatshwa, another SAPS ballistics analyst.
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