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Former Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) head Andrea Johnson pulled out all stops to get police national commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola charged, including wanting to trick him to “lie” before parliament, according to evidence placed before the Madlanga commission. State advocate Drushantha Ramsamy testified at the commission investigating allegations of criminal infiltration into the criminal justice system that Johnson’s leadership had “orchestrated attacks” against Masemola and crime intelligence head Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo. Ramsamy told the commission about a meeting in January 2022 in which Johnson told her team to keep Masemola in the dark about the directorate’s investigations into the KwaZulu-Natal political killings team and probe into police crime intelligence. “Adv Johnson said that the national commissioner (Gen Masemola) should not be informed of the investigation. She said the national commissioner would appear at the portfolio committee on policing soon and we should ‘let him lie’ at the portfolio committee,” Ramasamy said. Unaware of the investigation, Masemola would then presumably be caught lying when asked about the matter by MPs in an appearance before the committee chaired by DA MP Ian Cameron, Ramsamy said. “It looked and became evident that there was a line of march and that line of march was to get generals Khumalo and Masemola in an accused box. At some point there was some talk: ‘if he lies we can at least charge him’,” Ramsamy said. Commissioner Sandile Khumalo asked whether it was a “set-up” for Masemola. “Correct,” Ramasamy responded. He told the commission that crime intelligence boss Feroz Khan provided information to the directorate investigators in the probe into crime intelligence matters. Khan faced internal disciplinary proceedings within crime intelligence when he was providing information to the directorate in the build-up of a criminal case against his colleagues. “On 23 January 2025, Messrs [Dylan] Perumal and [Brian] Padayachee gave feedback on a consultation held with Maj-Gen Khan. They informed us that Khan told them that Gen Khumalo did not have top secret clearance,” she said. According to Khan, she said, despite the absence of top secret clearance, Masemola called Khan and told him to give Khumalo support and follow up on the vetting process of Khumalo. “Mr Perumal seemed to think that this was compelling evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Masemola,” Ramsamy said. Ramsamy also testified that one of Idac’s biggest cases of the R228m police tender, awarded to Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, followed an irregular process.She said the directorate started doing investigations on the matter without an affidavit referring the matter to Idac.“What I do know is that a section 28(1) in respect of the Medicare 24 matter was authorised on 16 May 2025 and this could have been used to obtain the downloads of Mr Matlala’s devices on 30 May 2025, but as I deal with later, I suspect that Adv Johnson and Mr Perumal knew that the Medicare 24 investigation was unlawful from inception,” Ramsamy said.The case of corruption against Matlala and police officers is one of the biggest cases the directorate handled.Business Day
