By Johnathan Paoli
Retired Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga has accused businessman and ANC member Suleiman Carrim of manufacturing urgency and abusing court processes in a last-minute bid to stop the Madlanga Commission from compelling his testimony.
This forms the central thrust of the commission’s heads of argument and Madlanga’s answering affidavit filed on 2 February in the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg.
In an answering affidavit, Madlanga said the commission was subjected to an “extraordinary truncation of time periods” after Carrim launched his urgent application on 26 January, despite having known that he was required to testify on 6 February.
“Mr Carrim’s application was launched on 26 January 2026. The commission was given less than 36 hours to file its answering affidavit.
“It was served after hearings commenced on the morning of 26 January 2026 and in the knowledge that my fellow commissioners and I would be required to sit in hearings until 16h00 on both 26 and 27 January 2026. The commission was accordingly given no days and only two nights to furnish its answering affidavit in the urgent application,” Madlanga stated.
He said that Carrim’s reliance on urgency was entirely self-created.
“Mr Carrim chose to impose this extreme urgency on the commission notwithstanding the fact that, before launching the application, Mr Carrim had chosen to delay: three full months since receiving the notice in terms of regulation 10(6); more than 10 weeks since he was first subpoenaed; more than nine weeks since first directing interrogatories; more than seven weeks since his appearance date was rescheduled; and nine days after he was informed that his appearance date would be rescheduled to 6 February,” the affidavit read.
Madlanga said that the urgent interim relief sought would in reality be final, given the Commission’s lifespan ends on 16 March.
He added that even if the commission sought another extension, its proceedings would conclude long before Part B of Carrim’s case, the review, could be heard.
Madlanga said the application has become moot in relation to Carrim’s refusal to provide a sworn statement, and that the remaining issue, namely Carrim’s subpoena to testify on Friday, was not properly before the court.
“Here the present application is manifestly defective because it does not address the subpoena that was served on Carrim on 23 January 2026…Yet he inexplicably failed to deal with the subpoena in his founding papers,” he stated.
Madlanga concluded that there was no prima facie case made out by Carrim and that the balance of convenience was clearly in the commission’s favour.
He asked that the application be struck from the roll with punitive costs, or postponed, in order to allow the commission sufficient time to respond.
Carrim’s urgent Part A application sought to interdict the commission from forcing him to provide a written statement or oral evidence until his Part B review is decided.
He asked the court to stop the commission from “issuing a notice calling upon the applicant to file a written statement or subpoenaing the applicant or coercing him in any way to appear before the commission”.
He also wants the commission ordered to “fully and properly respond” to his lawyers’ letters within three days.
In Part B, Carrim seeks to review and set aside the commission’s decision to issue a Regulation 10(6) notice, arguing breaches of procedural fairness, the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, natural justice, and the constitutional principle of legality.
He says he has been denied the chance to challenge evidence from several witnesses who implicated him in wrongdoing, including alleged crime boss Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and KZN police commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
He asks that those witnesses be recalled for cross-examination from his legal team, before he testifies.
INSIDE POLITICS