General Sibiya skewered like a kebab under fierce cross-examination

South Africa’s top cop in charge of detection and investigations was skewered by commissioners, the evidence leader and Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga at the Commission of Inquiry on 19 February.

General Shadrack Sibiya is a marquee character in the probe of allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption in the police service. He faces allegations of shuttering the KZN political killings task team (PKTT) and also of accepting bribes from the alleged criminal and tender masterminds Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and Katiso Molefe.

The bribes allegedly include impalas, cash and a mysterious bag picked up by his associate. Sibiya has denied receipt of anything and distanced himself from Matlala and Molefe, now both in jail while facing charges — one for murder and the other for attempted murder, among other charges.

Sibiya spent Day One of his evidence denying all the allegations against him. On Day Two, once cross-examination began, he came a cropper, dissembling under the forensic questioning from four of South Africa’s finest legal minds.

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Evidence leader, advocate Adila Hassim, combed through documents with a fine-tooth comb, raising contradictions and questioning his narrative. That narrative is to distance himself from the shuttering of the task team and claim to be the victim of hard-charging Police Minister Senzo Mchunu (now on taxpayer-funded gardening leave) and a lying National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola.

For their parts, the commissioners, advocates Sesi Baloyi and Sandile Khumalo, made their animus clear while maintaining the language of legal decorum.

The chairperson, Madlanga, is jolly and kind, but he takes no prisoners — and took none with Sibiya, who began with braggadocio and ended furious after a series of probing questions from Hassim, backed up by the commission.

Here are some extracts from the proceedings:

1. Baloyi to Sibiya:

“So why not the taxi killings task team?”

Sibiya claimed to have agreed to shut the PKTT as part of a bigger plan to close specialist teams that were expensive, in order to better fund murder, robbery and detective teams. Later, Hassim returned to the same theme, asking why teams with bigger budgets were left untouched.

Context: Matlala wanted the PKTT closed as its detectives circled close to his empire. That empire reached not only into Ekurhuleni’s metro police service, which he virtually ran as a shadow state, but also the national police. It emerged in evidence at both this commission and Parliament’s ad hoc inquiry that Matlala is a blesser (a rich playboy in South African parlance) who had an affair with a police officer in charge of procurement, to whom he gifted the expensive weight loss drug Ozempic, as News24 reported.

On 19 February, Sibiya alleged Matlala had bought 10 fridges for a police award function and also paid for General Hilda Senthumule’s BBL — Brazilian Butt Lift surgery — and had visited her home. Because of the surgery, he said, she had had to lie down in the back of her car while at work and was allowed to work from home as she couldn’t sit.

2. Baloyi to Sibiya:

“In March 2024, you supported the request for funding for the PKTT. You could have noted your reservation. You have to be able to reconcile this with your later change of mind.”

Context: Sibiya claimed to have been well aware of, and supported, plans to disband the PKTT, even though he had earlier approved a request for funding it. Hassim returned again and again to his duty of either refusing the request or noting his reservation if he felt pressured by it.

The general said it was early days in his new job and he was still finding his feet. He was appointed in July 2023. Hassim also cornered Sibiya on why his signature appeared on a letter, effectively closing the PKTT, which he said he had not drafted. He claimed the letter was delivered to him by an officer in Masemola’s office and that he felt pressured to sign.

Hassim to Sibiya: “Again, there’s a letter with your name on it, but you disavow the authorship?”; and again: “That doesn’t sound like a full and candid response, General.”

3. Baloyi to Sibiya:

“You are not answering the question.”

Sibiya faced many statements like this and was repeatedly asked to stop being long-winded and get to the point.

4. Khumalo to Sibiya:

“General, stop that” [when Sibiya made a theatrical fuss about apologising for a typo on a document]. “You’ve taken a guideline usually used to shut down task teams and applied that to a situation where the Minister surprised all of you by shutting down a task team without the usual protocols.”

Context: This suggests that Sibiya was helping the Minister to justify an unlawful decision.

5. Madlanga to Sibiya:

“I want to make the observation, General… you say you did not expect this letter (to disband the team after the Minister’s order on 31 December 2024), and you’ve said it twice now. The first time you said, ‘we all did not expect the disbandment’. You’ve said it four times (all in all). I find it odd that you say you were not surprised.”

Context: Sibiya said repeatedly that General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s bombshell press conference in July 2025, where he revealed the speed with which Mchunu ordered the closure of the task team, should not have been a surprise to police leaders, as there had been talk of it for months. Then he changed his mind this week and said it was unexpected.

6. Hassim to Sibiya:

“This is your letter. It requires communication with stakeholders, a summary of reasons (for the closure). All of this is pointing to a report trying to justify the decision (after the fact).”

Sibiya: “It is not an attempt to justify. I own the document because at the ultimate end, I had to sign it. (But it came from the National Police Commissioner’s office). We are both in this thing together.”

Context and comment: Sibiya always presented himself as a fearless crusader against corruption, but, at the commission, under the skilful cross-examination of South Africa’s top advocates, he came across as an officer who did the bidding of the Minister without due care or due process. On Day Two of his testimony, he appeared to be a man throwing his colleagues under the bus. This only revealed to the public how widely Matlala cast his net of patronage.

7. Hassim to Sibiya:

“You gave a very long response, but you haven’t answered the question.”

Context: It was the end of the day, and Sibiya looked spent — and quietly furious. DM