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Parliament has clarified that it has no record of National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams’ work laptop freezing after the politician on Tuesday told the Madlanga commission of inquiry he delayed submitting a statement to it for 10 months because his laptop persistently froze.Adams, the man whose allegations triggered the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption’s (Idac’s) now-collapsed corruption case against police crime intelligence generals, is a key witness in the probe into whether the directorate acted outside its mandate and embarked on an “orchestrated attack” against top cops.The top cops include national commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola and crime intelligence head Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo. Taking to the witness box for the first time, Adams told the commission he had not seen an email from October 2025 from the commission requesting he file a statement due to his laptop constantly freezing.“Parliament can confirm that I have a very problematic laptop; my laptop is either in for repairs or frozen. When I became aware of the email, I do not want to lie; it was three or four months ago. I had not noticed it in October,” Adams told the commission.Adams’ essential testimony had to be postponed after he filed a statement to the commission at 9pm on Monday, giving the commission no time to consider his version before a public testimony. Commission chair justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga said Adams’ explanation for it is “unbelievable”.Parliament in a statement on Tuesday evening rejected Adams’ attribution of his delays to “persistent problems” with his parliament-issued laptop.The statement details parliament reviewed the ICT service desk records relating to technical support logged for Adams to fact-check the claims made.“The records do not reflect any reported incident of persistent laptop malfunction, hardware failure, repeated freezing of the device, or the laptop being repeatedly submitted to ICT for repairs,” the statement reads.“The ICT incidents recorded during this period relate primarily to routine user-access and account-support matters. “Parliament therefore has no ICT Service Desk record supporting the assertion that Mr Adams’ parliamentary laptop was persistently dysfunctional for approximately 18 months in the manner described before the commission.”The legislature added parliament provided tools of trade so MPs were not limited to a single laptop but had a tablet and smartphone.Meanwhile, the commission on Tuesday heard that suspended minister Senzo Mchunu arranged for the inspector-general of intelligence (IGI) report to be handed over to Idac after the IGI had previously refused to provide it to the directorate.This is according to Idac’s Drushantha Ramsamy, who told the Madlanga commission on Tuesday that the exchange did not follow the processes that they normally abide by when they exchange information between them and IGI.“In September, Mr [Dylan] Perumal [suspended Idac chief investigator] told us that the minister, Senzo Mchunu, arranged with someone to fly to him in the Eastern Cape and provide the IGI report,” said Ramsamy.“I just know that it wasn’t supposed to come to us in that way [through the minister]. There are certain procedures and processes that have to be followed before the sharing of that information. There were channels that had to be followed for that information to be shared.” The report relates to the investigations that IGI was conducting into Crime Intelligence and Perumal had labelled “golden”. That is because it was believed that it would assist them in their case against crime intelligence head Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo and his senior colleagues.However, a few months before they got the report from Mchunu, they had a meeting with IGI, and the inspectorate had refused to hand them the report.“It was a fruitless meeting. They [IGI] could not assist us and we could not assist them,” she said.She told the commission that they had approached IGI because there was always information sharing between Idac and IGI on finalised reports.The investigation was ongoing, and the sharing of information could not take place, she said.Earlier, Ramsamy told the commission that a case against Khumalo, which she had been asked to work on, was enrolled in court while she was on sick leave, before she had concluded her assessment.“In June, I had read the docket, and I found that there were no merits for enrolment; I found that there was no prima facie evidence.“I had started drafting a memo where I had gone statement by statement, problem by problem and submission by submission, and then you would recommend that there was no case.“Unfortunately, I [became sick] and did not finish the memo. While on sick leave, I received a call from someone at the office who said, ‘Hey, aren’t you doing crime intelligence matters? Your matter is in court.’ I switched on the TV and saw the crime intelligence officers in court,” she said.Sowetan
