By Johnathan Paoli
Commissioners at the Madlanga Commission were this week again exposed first-hand to the crisis within South Africa’s law enforcement institutions, from bungled forensic reports and internal sabotage to the alleged collusion of senior police officials in crime and corruption.
Across four days of hearings, evidence leaders unpicked how administrative errors, delayed ballistics processing, and police infighting have compromised multiple murder investigations, including the 2024 assassination of Q Tech engineer Armand Swart.
The week opened with fiery exchanges between evidence leader and senior counsel Advocate Michael Chaskalson, and Brigadier Mishack Mkhabela, the head of SAPS’s ballistics section.
The session probed whether glaring omissions in an initial forensic report on the Swart case were simple mistakes, or deliberate acts of sabotage.
At issue was Captain Itumeleng Makgotloe’s original report, which failed to list 15 AK-47 cartridges recovered from the murder suspects and cited the wrong case number, potentially breaking
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