*As first published by Business Day on 8 June 2026

On 1 June, the Madlanga Commission – the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System – resumed its hearings. The commission was established by President Ramaphosa in July 2025 after KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lt Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi alleged collusion between senior officers, politicians, prosecutors and intelligence operatives. Since then, it has documented the infiltration of organised crime networks into senior policing, most starkly through the Big Five syndicate’s reach into Gauteng’s law-enforcement leadership.

This is all too familiar a pattern; one more expression of the corruption that has riddled countless South African institutions. It surfaced again last month at the Compensation Fund, where the Auditor-General has flagged seventy-one million rand of losses, fraudulent bank accounts, missing documents, and intercepted payments. This fund is paid for by South African employers, and it exists to protect South African workers. That it has been hollowed out so completely is a scandal.

The failings that the Auditor-General has found in relation to the Compensation Fund – weakened controls, eroded governance, and the dissolution of internal accountability – will be familiar to anyone watching the Madlanga Commission. These are the conditions of state capture, which occurs wherever oversight is allowed to lapse. They also explain why so much institutional damage has proved so hard to reverse.

Corruption Watch received around 2 200 corruption-related complaints in 2025, with policing once again topping the list at 300 reports – more than any other sub-sector. When the institutions meant to enforce the law are themselves captured by the people they are meant to police, the rule of law on which business and ordinary citizens depend is shown to be farcical. Neal Froneman, chair of Business Against Crime South Africa, put it bluntly in a recent interview, calling officials who contravene the laws they are meant to uphold treasonous.

The commission also exposed the depth of the culture of impunity, and the danger faced by those trying to disrupt it, when witness Marius van der Merwe was murdered three weeks after he testified. Van der Merwe’s name will be added to South Africa’s roll of murdered whistle-blowers and intimidated witnesses, investigators and prosecutors, alongside Mpho Mafole, Tracy Brown, Elona Sombulula, and so many others. The list is heartbreakingly long.

Corruption of this kind results in widespread disillusionment and weakened trust amongst the public and is a tragic betrayal of our commitment to the democratic project. Our children grow up with the coarsening sense that the rules are for some people and not for others. For business, investment decisions now have to price in how reliably the rule of law will hold from one year to the next, applying a steady braking force to our economic development. Crime and corruption now sit near the top of concerns that foreign investors cite when weighing capital deployment in South Africa.

Is there cause for hope? It seems that consequences may be slowly arriving. Thirteen senior SAPS officials have been suspended as a result of evidence heard by the commission, with at least 10 more expected to follow. Arrests are accelerating from commission referrals, reaching into the most senior ranks of the service; the commission has begun to function as a live roadmap for criminal investigations into the networks operating within SAPS structures.

This momentum is not, however, self-sustaining. News cycles move on, and the networks under scrutiny are patient. Business has a particular responsibility here. The private sector can and must do more to strengthen whistle-blower protection, refuse to deal with suppliers and intermediaries who cannot demonstrate clean compliance, and back the civil society organisations that track and litigate state capture. Citizens can keep the political cost of inaction high by voting and by refusing to normalise what the commission is exposing. Accountability is a civic muscle, and it atrophies when unused.

I commend the witnesses who continue to come forward at real personal risk, the police task team, the NPA leadership under Jan Lekgoa Mothibi, and former National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi, whose unstinting work under difficult circumstances paved the way for what we are now seeing.

What needs to follow is already clear. The NPA requires full financial and operational independence from the Department of Justice, with the National Director of Public Prosecutions as accounting officer and authority over senior appointments. The Investigating Directorate Against Corruption and the Asset Forfeiture Unit must be properly resourced. Whistle-blower and witness protection must be substantially strengthened.

The Nugent Commission was a defining moment for SARS, opening the way for the turnaround under Edward Kieswetter. The Madlanga Commission must do the same for our police services and the wider criminal justice system, and it must empower the clean officers within the service. The appointments that follow will determine whether reform actually takes root. Ramaphosa cast the net wide for SARS in 2019, and the country has been better for it; he must do the same now. The Madlanga recommendations must be implemented, with discipline.

Accountability cannot only be a fortunate byproduct of inquiries that did their job well and exposed criminal activity to public scrutiny. It must be entrenched in our institutions and treated as a routine expectation. Businesses and citizens must stand with the murdered whistle-blowers, the courageous witnesses, the dogged investigators, and say enough. The Madlanga Commission is showing what is possible when the work is done, and reiterating what is at stake. The reforms that follow it will determine whether the age of impunity has begun, in earnest, to close.

 

Ends