CHARLES MATSEKE | Why the Madlanga Commission must look beyond the Police 

South Africa is confronting a moment of constitutional reckoning. What began as an inquiry into police corruption and criminal networks has now exposed a deeper, more unsettling question: does the elected civilian authority still exercise effective control over the country’s coercive institutions?

Recent developments within the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) suggest the answer is increasingly uncertain.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s acceptance of the Madlanga Commission’s interim report and his swift establishment of a task team to implement its recommendations signals an acknowledgement that the rot within the police and security cluster has reached intolerable levels.

Yet even as corrective action is announced in the policing sphere, parallel developments within the military threaten to hollow out the very logic of accountability the Commission is meant to restore.

The contradiction is stark: how can the state claim to be reasserting the rule of law while its most coercive institution appears to operate beyond consequence?

On 17 December 2025, the Madlanga Commission submitted its interim report, identifying prima facie evidence of corruption, fraud, perjury and even murder involving senior SAPS officials and Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality employees.

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In January 2026, President Ramaphosa formally accepted the report and announced immediate implementation of its recommendations.

Central to this response was the establishment of a special investigations task team, constituted under the authority of the Minister of Police and the National Police Commissioner.

The team is mandated to fast-track criminal and disciplinary investigations, working alongside SAPS and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), and reporting directly to the National Commissioner. Several senior SAPS officers including Major Generals and Brigadiers have been referred for investigation.

Civil society organisations such as Public Interest SA have welcomed this step, describing it as necessary to restore public trust in law enforcement and to signal that consequence management is no longer optional.

Yet this response exposes a glaring omission: the military remains conspicuously outside the frame, despite mounting evidence that the same patterns of elite protection, institutional silence and disregard for civilian authority are now present within the SANDF.

Only weeks ago, a senior SANDF general made bold, geopolitical statements in a war-torn region, speaking as though on behalf of South Africa and even the President without any public indication of authorisation from the Presidency.

In any constitutional democracy, such conduct would raise immediate alarms about civil-military boundaries.

This was not an isolated lapse in protocol. It followed reports that presidential instructions to exclude Iran from SANDF military drills in Cape Town were ignored. When the armed forces defy or disregard directives from the Commander-in-Chief without consequence, the issue is no longer operational autonomy, it is institutional insubordination.

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The most extraordinary development, however, is the promotion of a general facing serious criminal charges including murder, extortion and conspiracy to commit murder to Head of SANDF Special Forces. This appointment took place while the courts are still seized with cases linked to the assassination of a senior Hawks investigator, allegedly involving Special Forces operatives.

Special Forces are not an ordinary unit. They represent the sharp end of the state’s coercive capacity. To place them under the command of an individual accused of the gravest crimes is to normalise the idea that rank insulates one from accountability.

This mirrors precisely what I warned about in my earlier writing on policing: “the uniform is compromised, and so is the response” (EWN, July 2025). The problem is no longer individual misconduct; it is the institutional response to that misconduct. One that protects insiders while demanding compliance from everyone else.

In a later EWN piece, I argued that South Africa had become a “Republic of Commissions,” arriving at a point of no return where inquiries proliferate because institutions no longer self-correct. The SANDF’s current trajectory suggests that this logic now extends beyond policing into the military sphere.

The parallels are unmistakable:

Serious allegations involving senior officials

Delayed or absent consequence management

Institutional defensiveness

Political reluctance to confront entrenched power networks

What distinguishes the military, however, is the scale of risk. A compromised police service is dangerous; a military operating with effective impunity is existentially so.

The Constitution is unambiguous: the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Force. Yet authority is not merely legal; it is exercised through enforcement. When generals speak without mandate, ignore presidential instructions and are promoted despite criminal charges, authority becomes symbolic rather than real.

This raises an uncomfortable but unavoidable question: has President Ramaphosa lost control, or at least leverage, over the SANDF?

If the answer is yes, then the implications extend far beyond party politics. They cut to the heart of civilian supremacy, democratic oversight, and constitutional order.

The logic of the Madlanga Commission cannot stop at SAPS and IPID. The same risk factors; elite networks, secrecy, weak oversight and intimidation are now visible within the military.

To exclude the SANDF from scrutiny would be to concede that there exists a security institution beyond democratic reach.

Extending the Commission’s scope to include the SANDF is not an attack on the military; it is a defence of it. Armed forces derive legitimacy from discipline, integrity and subordination to civilian authority. Without these, they become a law unto themselves.

South Africa cannot afford selective accountability. A task team that pursues police generals while military generals are promoted under a cloud of murder charges sends a devastating signal: there are two standards of justice; one for the powerful in uniform and another for everyone else.

The Madlanga Commission has opened a door. The President has taken a step by implementing its interim recommendations. But unless that door is pushed wider to include the SANDF’ the exercise risks becoming another technocratic response to a systemic crisis.

The rule of law is indivisible. Either it binds all institutions that wield force in the name of the Republic, or it binds none

Charles Matseke (MPhil in Politics and International Relations) is a researcher and writer with a keen interest in contemporary political dynamics. His research focuses on electoral politics, foreign policy analysis, and international relations, with a particular emphasis on the Global South and Africa's role in global affairs.