POLITICS & POLICING: From EFF’s Malema to ANC’s Carrim — the politics permeating SA’s cop collusion scandal

Never has the line separating suspected gangsterism from governance been so flimsy and transparent in South Africa.

This is because several political parties have featured in the country’s unprecedented police collusion scandal, with politicians repeatedly surfacing amid related accusations and suspicions.

Their names have been emerging as South Africa heads towards next week’s local government elections.

So, the backdrop to the elections is now a shaky law enforcement arena that is saturated with suspicions about political proximity and influence.

That arena overlaps with the political landscape pockmarked with questions about allegedly dubious plots and dodgy relationships.

Politics, police, and perpetrators

Suspected connections between politicians and crooks, or suspicions that some politicians are actually crooks, have done the rounds for decades.

But these ramped up in July 2025 when KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi publicly alleged that a cartel had infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system, politics and private sector.

His staggering accusations exposed the depths of divisions among top law enforcers and led to criminal charges being laid against several police officers.

The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry and a parallel parliamentary hearing were created to investigate Mkhanazi’s accusations.

Both hearings, now winding up, have churned out the names of politicians and political party members.

There are too many to include in this piece, so only some will be included.

The political parties are the ANC, EFF, NCC, DA and PA.

Several names are connected to the ANC, which is still struggling to repair a reputation ravaged by its former leader Jacob Zuma, under whose presidency State Capture surged.

Mchunu and another ANC comrade

Last year, Mkhwanazi essentially alleged that sidelined police minister Senzo Mchunu was linked to figures involved in infiltrating the police service and that criminal suspects influenced him to order the disbandment of a police task team.

Mchunu denied wrongdoing, but President Cyril Ramaphosa placed him on special leave.

This did not look good for the ANC, because Mchunu is an ANC “comrade” who has a deep history with the party.

Cat Matlala and the cancelled contract

Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala is a central figure in South Africa’s law enforcement infiltration scandal. He faces criminal charges, including attempted murder. One of the criminal cases against Matlala involves a police health tender that in 2024 was awarded to his company Medicare 24 Tshwane District. The tender was budgeted at R360-million, and it was alleged that due to collusion with police officers, Matlala’s company was awarded the contract for R228-million. This was later cancelled. National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola was also charged in the case, but has since been cleared.

Mkhwanazi’s allegations had included that Mchunu was connected to ANC-aligned businessman Brown Mogotsi, who styled himself as an informant.

Mogotsi, in turn, was accused of acting as an intermediary between Mchunu and organised crime accused Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala (also suspected of corrupting several police officers).

Mchunu acknowledged that he knew Mogotsi as a “comrade,” but did not consider him an associate.

Brown (Mogotsi), green, black and gold

Mogotsi was clearly tarnishing the green, black and gold because the ANC distanced itself from him.

An ANC statement in October 2025 said: “Our membership records confirm that Mr Mogotsi’s ANC membership has expired. We now can confirm that Mr Mogotsi is therefore not an ANC member […]

“The ANC wishes to make it clear: we distance ourselves unequivocally from any form of organised criminal activity.”

As for Mogotsi, well, he is now accused of staging an assassination attempt on himself and trying to bribe the investigating officer in that case.

Fast-forward to last week.

Carrim and the ‘nearly stolen’ cars

North West businessman Suliman Carrim, a former ANC regional treasurer in the province, was criminally charged… for the second time.

He previously admitted to having dealings with Matlala.

Carrim was initially arrested as he was about to leave South Africa at OR Tambo International Airport late on 15 October 2026, for failing to testify at the Madlanga Commission.

Six days later, Carrim was added as an accused in a money laundering and theft case involving two others.

According to the National Prosecuting Authority: “It is alleged that Carrim, acting in collusion with his employees, attempted to steal two vehicles belonging to Absa by taking them out of the country using fraudulent documentation.”

Carrim is expected back in the Musina Magistrates’ Court on 30 October for this case.

If you go on to social media and scroll around, you’ll probably see photographs pop up of him sporting an ANC cap or T-shirt.

Paired with the criminal charges Carrim now faces, these are also not great optics for the ANC.

Malema, Khan and ousting plot allegations

Enter the EFF.

Party leader Julius Malema’s name has been mentioned several times at the Madlanga Commission.

Then Crime Intelligence officer Feroz Khan is the hinge between Malema and the hearings.

Khan was wounded in a shooting at the end of June, and his uncle was murdered in a shooting earlier this month, which meant Khan was unable to testify at the commission as repeatedly scheduled.

He is scheduled to testify in camera at some point.

But parts of the Madlanga Commission proceedings have already focused on Khan.

Some dealt with an alleged conspiracy to oust former Inspector-General of Intelligence (IGI) Setlhomamaru Dintwe, who oversaw Crime Intelligence and therefore Khan.

Matters around Malema

In April 2026, EFF leader Julius Malema was sentenced to five years’ direct imprisonment over the unlawful possession of a firearm and related offences carried out during an EFF rally in Mdantsane in 2018.

He was also declared unfit to possess a firearm. A court granted Malema’s defence team leave to appeal. According to a National Prosecuting Authority statement: “Malema remains out on warning pending the finalisation of the appeal.”

Messages allegedly between Khan and tobacco industry figure Mohammadh Sayed, who works at the controversial company Carnilinx, were read out at the Madlanga Commission.

Some messages, allegedly between Sayed and Malema, were also read into evidence at the commission, where it was heard that Sayed may have sometimes been messaging Malema on Khan’s behalf and vice versa.

In mid-2021, Khan had messaged Sayed with a list of questions intended for Dintwe.

The questions were in connection with Timmy Marimuthu, whom the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism has described as “a former drug dealer previously recruited and paid by Crime Intelligence”.

According to what has emerged at the Madlanga Commission, it seemed that Malema was meant to ensure that Khan’s questions to Dintwe were asked in Parliament – it was envisioned that Dintwe would lie in his response, leading to his removal from his IGI post.

This suggested Malema was acting as a proxy for Khan, then a Crime Intelligence officer.

For his part, Malema denied any involvement in unlawful activities that the Khan and Sayed messages may have implied were linked to him.

At the parallel parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating the infiltration scandal, Malema had glowing words for a state official who, it later turned out, was curiously close to Khan.

This was Andrea Johnson, the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) boss at the time.

During the parliamentary hearing, Malema had told her: “Sitting here for me, this is quality leadership coming from a black woman.”

It turned out that Johnson was not necessarily a quality leader.

What happened later shows why, and it involves yet another political party, the National Coloured Congress.

Adams and the Crime Intelligence cases

NCC leader Fadiel Adams was associated with, among others, retired senior policeman Andre Lincoln, who seemed to support the NCC despite his deep and textured ANC background.

Lincoln died in 2025.

Towards the end of the previous year, Adams lodged a series of criminal complaints with the police, implicating senior Crime Intelligence officers.

He told the Madlanga Commission that his complaints were based on Crime Intelligence documents about corruption that had been slipped under his parliamentary office door.

Adams’ complaints eventually led to an Idac investigation that saw Crime Intelligence boss Dumisani Khumalo among a group of officers arrested in June 2025 for an allegedly irregular appointment.

This loops back to then Idac boss Andrea Johnson, whom Malema viewed in high regard, and to Khan.

Johnson headed Idac when Khumalo, Khan’s boss, was arrested.

She later admitted to the Madlanga Commission that the irregular appointment case Idac was driving against Khumalo was flawed.

Johnson resigned as accusations against her mounted, while Khumalo and his Crime Intelligence co-accused were cleared.

This suggests that the complaints Adams lodged in this regard were baseless, that he was either used to topple Khumalo or he was knowingly part of a plot to do so. (He was of the view that he was unknowingly entangled in a broader game.)

MADLANGA COMMISSION | Fadiel Adams says he was not acting on behalf of Gen Feroz Khan and now accepts that events may have been unfolding behind the scenes without his knowledge. https://t.co/6xwwRExtF5

— SABC News (@SABCNews) August 21, 2026

Adams appeared to favour Khan, whose two previous superiors, Dintwe and Khumalo, had been the targets of alleged ousting-style plots.

Khan has since been criminally charged in a case involving unwrought gold and the release of a suspect, and has been dismissed from the South African Police Service.

Adams, based in the Western Cape, was subsequently arrested in a fraud and defeating the ends of justice case rooted in KwaZulu-Natal, the province where Mkhwanazi heads the police.

That case is expected to resume next month.

Kohler Barnard, Campbell and the denials

The DA, which has previously been entangled in accusations involving alleged 28s gangsters in Cape Town, has also popped up in the overall law enforcement scandal.

Mkhwanazi previously alleged that DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard appeared to have obtained information about Crime Intelligence that should not have been disseminated. 

He had accused Kohler Barnard of breaking the law and “fuelling these malicious attacks” involving Crime Intelligence.

Earlier this year, Kohler Barnard ended up as a witness at the parliamentary committee where she denied accusations that she had leaked information.

Meanwhile, the Madlanga Commission earlier heard that when former City of Ekurhuleni mayor Tania Campbell of the DA was mayor of the metro, a dubious memorandum of understanding was signed between that city’s metro police department and a Cat Matlala company.

Campbell later said neither she nor the DA had known about it.

McKenzie, ‘laughable’ drug claims and gangsters

And last, but definitely not least, is the PA’s Gayton McKenzie.

During the parliamentary hearing investigating the infiltration accusations, focus briefly fell on a handwritten statement, apparently from an inmate, Jermaine Prim.

It alleged that McKenzie had received drugs from an associate of Cat Matlala’s and that McKenzie had supplied consignments to Western Cape gangsters, including William “Red” Stevens.

(Stevens was widely viewed as the most seasoned 27s gangster in the Western Cape and was murdered in a 2021 shooting. He was a PA member – his daughter still is – and McKenzie spoke at his funeral.)

At the time, McKenzie denied the drug accusations, telling the SABC: “It’s laughable to me.”

McKenzie had also said he could never be a proxy for someone else.

Last month, Daily Maverick reported how McKenzie created the impression that he was a proxy for someone he described as a gang member.

This came after McKenzie spoke in a social media video about unverified claims against DA politician JP Smith.

McKenzie said the claims were from a 28s gangster who had phoned him. DM