Staff Reporter
KwaZulu-Natal Hawks officer Lieutenant-Colonel Deena Govender will have to give specific evidence publicly before the Madlanga Commission when he returns for cross examination on Monday, although some sensitive testimony will remain protected.
The commission rejected Govender’s application to have his responses to two sections of a Regulation 10(6) notice heard behind closed doors.
“The application to have the applicant’s evidence relating to responses to paragraphs 2.4 and 2.5 of the Commission’s Regulation 10(6) Notice dated 7 August 2026 heard in-camera is refused,” the commission said on Sunday.
Govender was ordered to give that evidence in open.
The ruling limited what Govender can disclose publicly.
“The applicant shall not be required, in the evidence to be heard in public, to disclose the identities of witnesses in relation to the ongoing investigation into the theft of suspected cocaine at the Port Shepstone offices of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation,” the commission said.
Govender will also not be required to disclose specific police strategies, investigative techniques or intelligence-gathering methods.
The commission ruled that evidence dealing with testimony previously given by the anonymous “Witness P” about a counter-intelligence operation targeting organised drug gangs in Durban must be heard in camera.
Govender heads the Hawks’ provincial tracing team and previously commanded a police cash-in-transit task team.
Independent Police Investigative Directorate deputy (IPID) director for investigations in KwaZulu-Natal Len John told the inquiry earlier this month that IPID had examined 149 deaths involving SAPS task teams in the province between April 2023 and May 2026, with 77 of those cases forming part of the evidence presented to the inquiry.
He said Govender had allegedly received more than R2.5 million in “suspicious payments” from a tow-truck company owner between August 2022 and December 2023.
John said that police accounts of acting in self-defence were not always supported by the evidence at the scenes.
In some cases, he said, several people were killed but only a small number of firearms were recovered, while some of those killed were allegedly unarmed or could not be linked to the crimes for which the task teams said they were being pursued.
The following day, former police officer Gregory Loftus accused Govender and officers under his command of killing his son, tow-truck operator Bevan Loftus, during a police operation in Durban in April 2023.
He alleged the killing had been arranged by rival tow-truck operator Clive Naicker.
When Govender testified on 21 August, he claimed he had been pressured to implicate KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in police shootings.
Govender alleged that Mavuso Ntandane, whom he said was close to suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, approached him before his testimony and that Mchunu subsequently spoke to him by telephone about blaming the shootings on Mkhwanazi’s instructions.
Mchunu has denied the allegations.
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