The Madlanga Commission Must Not Ignore the Billion-Rand Smoking Gun.
A billion-rand policing operation may have been guided not by crime intelligence or public-safety imperatives, but by a government apparatus whose strategic orientation has become increasingly indistinguishable from the corporate mining lobby and criminal interests. When MACUA submitted evidence to the Madlanga Commission raising serious concerns about the evidence that had emerged in the Madlanga Commission about Operation Vala Umgodi and the deaths in Stilfontein, the Commission acknowledged receipt, but its hearings have yet to reflect any engagement with the issues raised. Instead, the inquiry has focused almost exclusively on the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) and the Ekhurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department . To an extent, this is understandable. The Commission was established in response to allegations by General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi that the PKTT had been disbanded due to improper links between senior politicians and criminal syndicates. The inquiry was b...