A Dead Man’s Phone Tied the Big Five Story Together
On 18 August 2026 the Madlanga Commission spent Day 161 reading WhatsApp messages taken off the phone of Jothan Msibi, named in police testimony as the president of the Big Five cartel, who died in January 2024. The day was scheduled only because Vusimuzi Matlala’s testimony had been postponed and no other witness could step in. What emerged linked people and cases the commission had been treating as separate investigations, including 2 attempts by private individuals to buy state grade phone interception equipment while claiming to represent the South African government.
A filler day that was not one
Evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson opened by explaining that Matlala had been postponed and there was no witness who could drop in on a day’s notice, so the commission would use the day to deal with evidence flowing from Msibi’s WhatsApp chats. He apologised more than once for the haphazard nature of a presentation put together on short notice.
Most of the reporting took him at his word and treated the day as a gap filler. That undersells what was placed on the record.
Chaskalson himself said what was extraordinary about the phone was that it drew connections between topics the commission had been looking at which seemed completely self contained and unrelated to one another. That is a careful way of saying the investigation had been running several cases that were never separate cases at all.
Msibi has been dead for over 2 years. Data has a funny way of staying behind on a device long after the person carrying it is gone.
Carnilinx called Msibi when it got robbed
The first set of messages connects Msibi to the tobacco company Carnilinx, a name already in this commission through Crime Intelligence officer Feroz Khan, who was shot at the end of June 2026 shortly before he was due to testify.
In February 2021, Carnilinx director Kyle Phillips messaged Msibi, who he addressed as Pappa Joe, after the company was robbed. Phillips thanked him for sorting it out and asked whether the stolen firearms could be recovered as well. Days later Phillips confirmed all the stock had been returned. Msibi’s reply was that he would assist where he could whenever the company had that sort of problem.
He was taken up on the offer. In August that year Phillips wrote that Msibi’s soldiers had arrived and that he owed him. Later Phillips asked for help after an armed robbery at a second factory in Wadeville, writing that he knew one call from Msibi would sort everything out. Phillips also asked Msibi whether he knew anybody wanting 25 litre drums of what he called red water. Chaskalson said the most likely explanation is the mercury water used by illegal gold miners, while stressing this has not been established and there may be an innocent explanation.
Chaskalson noted that the commission had previously seen no link whatsoever between Khan’s dealings with Carnilinx and the Big Five investigation.
The Ekurhuleni tender that went exactly where it was pointed
In April 2023 Msibi sent businessman Ze Nxumalo the details of a contract he wanted, a project management unit for the City of Ekurhuleni’s rapid public transport network, together with the name of the company he wanted it to go to, Kamprock.
In June that year Nxumalo forwarded Msibi the actual bid invitation, carrying the message that it was not a panel, asking whether it was spoken for, and noting that 2 people were asking.
Asked to identify who wrote those words, Nxumalo told the commission he had no recollection of the message or of who sent it, and disputed writing it on the grounds that it was not his manner of typing. Chaskalson called the answer evasive and said that if the statement is true, it is staggering that Nxumalo deals with people sending tender rigging messages often enough that he cannot remember this one.
In October 2023 Nxumalo told Msibi the tender had gone to that week’s bid evaluation committee. In November 2023 it was awarded to Kamprock.
One of Kamprock’s 2 registered directors is Nokuthula Nxumalo. Her name returns below.
Two attempts to buy state surveillance equipment
The most serious material placed on the record concerns grabbers, described by Chaskalson as devices that mimic a legitimate cellphone tower and trick nearby phones into connecting to them, allowing calls and data to be intercepted. He told the commission that no private party should lawfully be entitled to use one, because interception of communications requires a judicial warrant and those are not granted to private parties.
The Invasys approach
The first attempt ran through suspended Sergeant Fannie Nkosi. In February 2023 a middleman sent Nkosi a draft letter and asked him to put it on a SAPS letterhead. Nkosi signed it, added his force number and applied an official police stamp.
The letter was addressed to the Czech Ministry of Trade and Industry. It stated that a Czech company, Invasys, would demonstrate its equipment to the South African Police Service in Pretoria, which is the assurance the Czech authorities required before permitting the demonstration. Nkosi forwarded the signed letter to Msibi 2 seconds after sending it to the middleman.
The demonstration went ahead. The messages that follow refer to travelling to the kingdom, understood to mean Eswatini, and to the King having a final meeting with someone called the old man. Chaskalson said the plan was to sell the technology to Eswatini, and described Nkosi’s letter as an out and out fraud to which everyone with knowledge of it was a party.
Commissioner Khumalo asked what it says about the use of police stamps. Chaskalson answered that every captain has a stamp for routine duties such as commissioning an oath, and that a South African would not be fooled by such a document, but that someone in the Czech Republic would have no idea how the SAPS issues authority at senior level. He said the risk is heightened in transactions with foreign entities.
Commissioner Khumalo also raised the obvious question of what else could have been authorised the same way. Chaskalson said the commission does not know.
The deal collapsed. By October 2023 the Czech side was writing that they were disappointed, that nobody was returning calls, and that they took it the deal was off.
The Themi Style approach
A second attempt ran in parallel through Msibi’s own company, Themi Style.
In May 2023 Msibi and Steve Motsumi flew to Paris, made their own way to Hamburg, and returned through Zurich. Ahead of the trip an email was sent to a German contact stating that Msibi was the company’s director, that Motsumi was a trusted partner, that both had the capacity and mandate to conduct business on behalf of the company, and that they would present a letter of appointment and service level agreement from the state. Chaskalson said they were purporting to have a service level agreement from the state.
The author of that email was Nokuthula Nxumalo, a director of Kamprock.
On 4 June 2023, Katiso Molefe forwarded Msibi a quotation dated 23 May, days after the pair returned from Europe. It priced an active monitoring system including a multi radio access technology base station, which Chaskalson identified as a grabber, at 780,000 Euro per unit. He estimated the rand value at the time at between R15 million and R18 million. Additional units were quoted at 150,000 each, with a tactical jammer available as an option.
Themi Style’s own profile presented it as an intelligence and security services provider offering technical surveillance and covert operations, and stated that it ensures state owned assets are up to date with the latest security systems. Company records list Msibi as its only director.
Chaskalson set out who the commission is dealing with. Msibi was described by Crime Intelligence head General Khumalo as the then leader of the Big Five cartel. Molefe is on trial for murder in a matter involving firearms linked to more than 30 other murder scenes in Gauteng over 5 years. Motsumi is a man whose name, Chaskalson said, General Senona was too scared to mention while he was head of the Hawks.
His conclusion was that private parties were passing themselves off as representatives of states in order to trade in technology that should only reach intelligence agencies operating under strict statutory control. He called it a very worrying state of affairs, and noted that whether or not they succeeded in selling it onward, they would presumably also have access to it for their own purposes.
The cannabis operation
A further set of messages, running from early to mid 2022, documents a cannabis growing operation at Jack Frost Pharmaceuticals in Germiston. A contact saved as Sean sent Msibi weekly photographs and video of the crop, and at one point asked Msibi to send men to Germiston because his grow team was being watched, saying Msibi’s people would create more fear than his own.
The licence in the record for Jack Frost is dated 19 September 2022, after the growth shown in the messages. Chaskalson said that on its face the licence did not authorise the cultivation shown, but declined to call it unlawful outright. He noted that a different form of permit may exist under separate legislation and that the company would be asked to account before any finding is made.
What was not resolved
Several threads were opened and left open.
Chaskalson confirmed the commission has not traced the middleman in the Invasys matter, though a Mail and Guardian report may connect the name to a controversy over a parliamentary security tender. Commissioner Baloyi noted that if the middleman is a South African national, he stands in the same position as Nkosi and has committed a criminal offence.
A payment of just under R1 million in Euros, referenced in messages between Nokuthula Nxumalo and Msibi, remains unexplained. Nxumalo told the commission he has no recollection of the trade or of who received it. Chaskalson said the commission will approach the Reserve Bank.
Commissioner Khumalo cautioned that the commission has not established any link between that payment and the former Ekurhuleni city manager, whose contact details were passed to Msibi in September 2023 while the Kamprock bid was pending, and who then received a call from him. Chaskalson agreed there is no evidence connecting the two.
A separate joint venture involving bus transport contracts, running through companies linked to Msibi, was also opened and left unresolved. Chaskalson said the investigation has not got to the bottom of it.
The problem with evidence from a dead man
None of this was tested by cross examination, and that limitation deserves to be stated plainly rather than glossed over.
Msibi cannot be asked why a tobacco company called him to recover stolen stock, what Themi Style’s actual mandate was, or who the money in Euros was for. The messages are his, but the explanation of them can only come from the people at the other end of the conversations.
Commissioner Khumalo made exactly this point at the close of the day. He asked that the people appearing in the chats be given the opportunity to explain themselves in writing, so that the record contains their version rather than only the evidence leader’s reading of it. Chaskalson agreed to do so.
That is the correct approach, and it is worth holding onto as this material moves into the public conversation. Nkosi, Motsumi, Molefe and Nxumalo are all alive. Each of them now has to account for a conversation started by somebody who cannot be questioned.
Where this leaves the inquiry
The commission has spent months treating the Khan material, the Big Five material and the Ekurhuleni material as distinct lines of inquiry. One phone, read into the record on a day that was never meant to happen, showed they overlap.
The grabber evidence is the part that should concern people most. A rigged tender costs money. Private individuals obtaining the ability to intercept communications, while holding themselves out as the South African state to foreign governments, goes to who controls the instruments of the state at all.
Matlala’s testimony resumes on 24 August 2026, following argument on his points in limine. Fadiel Adams was scheduled to appear on 19 August 2026.
