Madlanga Commission Day 168 – Who Called The Hawks?
Retired Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya spent 27 August 2026 in front of the Madlanga Commission giving his version of why Hawks members arrived at the Sandhurst home of murder accused Katiso Molefe on 6 December 2024. His answer is that a man phoned to say people at the address were impersonating Hawks officers, and that he sent members to check. His own sworn statement contains the WhatsApp timeline from that afternoon, including a message at 17:48 that thanks him and then regrets that the police he sent were not allowed inside the yard. His cross examination has not yet happened.
A day of reading, not testing
Lebeya was the National Head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation from 1 June 2018 to 31 May 2025. He is now retired, practising as an advocate, and holds a doctorate, and he asked the Commission to address him as doctor rather than general.
His evidence runs to roughly 170 pages, with a supplementary affidavit of about 64 pages. Chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga said it is the longest statement the Commission has received. Evidence leader Lee Segeels-Ncube and Lebeya’s counsel, Adv Eric Nwedo, agreed overnight to cut roughly 60 percent of the reading, and further legal sections were skipped.
That matters for how the day should be read. Only his statements were led. Cross examination has been postponed to a date that has not been set, and Segeels-Ncube signalled more than once that she will return to the difficult material later. Everything reported from 27 August is an untested account.
The afternoon of 6 December 2024
Lebeya’s position is stated at the outset of his statement. He does not know Katiso Molefe. Molefe did not contact him. He was contacted by a man who goes by the name Malcolm X. He directed two senior managers to verify allegations that people at the address were claiming to be Hawks members sent by him, and he never instructed anyone to interrupt a legitimate police operation.
The timeline is his own. The calls start at 15:43, from a number already saved on his phone. At 15:51 Malcolm X sends the Sandhurst address, and Lebeya forwards it to Lieutenant General Patrick Mbotho and Major General Ebrahim Kadwa with an instruction to get people there.
From there it moves down the chain. Mbotho passes the address to Brigadier Lesiba Mokoena, who deploys Captain Barry Kruger and a constable. Mbotho told the Commission that Lebeya did not say who had called him, and that he did not ask.
At 16:08 Malcolm X sends a vehicle registration, followed at 16:09 by a message describing it as their car registration. Those are police vehicles at the scene. At 16:29 he switches to a second number that is not saved on Lebeya’s phone. At 17:15 he sends further registrations with makes and models.
At 17:17 he sends this: the above two cars just arrived and confirmed they were sent by you, General.
At 17:48, 31 minutes later, comes the message at the centre of the day. It thanks Lebeya for sending people who verified that the men at the house are policemen, says King Nyambose appreciates his efforts, and adds that it is a pity that the policemen he sent were not allowed inside the yard in the house.
At 21:32 that night Malcolm X phones again. The call lasts 3 minutes. Lebeya describes it in his statement as Malcolm X appreciating the fact that they attended.
Nyambose, and the man at the tape
Nyambose is the Mthethwa clan name, and Lebeya said so when Segeels-Ncube asked him about the message.
Commissioner Sandile Khumalo then took him through it. Asked whether he spoke to Mr Mthethwa that day, Lebeya said he had not, that he spoke to Malcolm. Asked whether he knows Mr Mthethwa, he said he does not. Asked whether it would be untrue if Mthethwa said he knows Lebeya, he said people may know him. Asked plainly whether they are friends rather than a face off television, he said no.
Segeels-Ncube asked why Malcolm X would use the name to him as though he should know who was meant. Lebeya said he does not know why.
The Commission has already heard evidence about a Mthethwa at that property. On 4 November 2025, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, then head of Crime Intelligence, told the Commission that all their information points towards a Mr Boy Mthethwa as the person who activated the involvement of the Hawks.
Khumalo described what happened. Once the target was neutralised, Mthethwa came forward and tried to cross the demarcated tape, introducing himself as a brother to Molefe so that he could be allowed in. He was refused. Khumalo gave his words as: if you refuse me as a brother to Katiso Molefe to enter, then I am going to call the Hawks to come here.
Khumalo added a further detail. Captain Wanda, the senior officer on the operation, gave evidence that he spoke to Brigadier Mokoena of the Hawks on Mr Mthethwa’s phone. Asked who Mthethwa is, Khumalo said only that he is an associate of Mr Molefe.
Khumalo was careful throughout. He said the information points towards Mthethwa and that they are moving towards identifying him as the activator. It is not a finding.
Who made the call
Lebeya described Malcolm X as a member of the public who is neither his friend nor his enemy, and said police routinely receive information from members of the public.
He also set out their history. They first met on 18 April 2023, in Lebeya’s office, at Malcolm X’s request, for a reason Lebeya told the Commission belongs in camera. A photograph was taken. Lebeya said allowing members of the public to photograph him is not prohibited, and that most people like a picture with him. He was asked whether Malcolm X was the person who later used such a photograph to claim authority to investigate cases for the Hawks, and said it was a different person.
On 23 October 2023, Malcolm X was arrested by the Serious Corruption Investigation unit at Hawks head office alongside a Crime Intelligence warrant officer and two members of the K9 unit. Reporting at the time recorded charges relating to a payment of R580 000 said to have been made by a woman to avoid arrest, with Malcolm X alleged to be the middleman. No outcome to that case has been reported and the allegations have not been tested in court.
Malcolm X has explained his presence publicly. He told eNCA he was acting for a client who is Molefe’s brother, and who wanted to know whether there was a warrant out for Molefe. In a longer account he said the client feared Molefe was about to be kidnapped or killed by people posing as police, that he drove to the house alone, and that he found 35 to 40 people in the yard, vehicles without registration plates, men in balaclavas and nobody willing to identify themselves. He said he asked to speak to their commander, and phoned Lebeya when told they were Hawks officers sent by him.
That account has not been tested either. It also differs in its details from what Lebeya told the Commission, and from what Lebeya told SABC News in 2025, and from Khumalo’s evidence about who was at the tape.
Hawks Warrant Officer Paul Radebe testified in November 2025 that Malcolm X was at the scene wearing a cap and spectacles, photographing and filming, and speaking on a phone.
What the officers asked for at the gate
Witness A, the officer in charge of the operation, told the Commission that the Hawks officers who arrived demanded entry and wanted the case number, the details of the investigation and the identity of the investigating officer.
Lebeya’s statement says his members were called to visit the address specifically to verify. It does not address why verifying the identity of police officers required the case number or the name of the investigating officer.
Friendly fire, and where Lebeya puts the blame
In paragraph 9 of his statement, Lebeya says a confrontational atmosphere was established at Sandton that day and that it might have led to unintended outcomes including the possibility of friendly fire.
He applies a but for test and concludes that if Dumisani Khumalo had informed him about the operation, or had checked with him on hearing that Hawks members were at the scene, the situation would not have arisen. He says it is unfortunate that Khumalo cited the issue of trust.
Khumalo has given his reason. He told the Commission he kept the Hawks out because of information received in May 2024 that a Hawks captain was working with the people he was investigating.
The recommendation that was never implemented
The day’s other significant exchange concerned 541kg of cocaine stolen from a Hawks office in Port Shepstone.
Lebeya sent his deputy, Lieutenant General Mosikili, to establish what had happened. Her report recommended that the National Head appoint a senior official at Major General level to run a separate investigation under the SAPS discipline regulations, to determine whether misconduct had occurred in the handling and storage of the exhibits.
On 28 January 2022, Lebeya annotated the report to say paragraph 6 should be discussed. The meeting did not take place. No disciplinary investigation was started before he left in May 2025, and Lebeya told the Commission it was done after his time.
His explanation was that a disciplinary investigation cannot begin without first identifying who is to be investigated. Madlanga pointed out that identifying them was the task of the person he was supposed to appoint, and asked whether he had rejected the recommendation or accepted it. Lebeya said he had not rejected it. Madlanga said that if it was legally competent, he still did not understand why it was not implemented.
Commissioner Sandile Khumalo put it more plainly, saying the Hawks lose 541kg of cocaine, the deputy recommends an investigation, and if the meeting does not happen then nothing happens. Lebeya replied that he would accept that.
Paying for his own lawyers
Lebeya appeared at his own cost. He applied to the SAPS for legal representation on 12 November 2025 under National Instruction 1 of 2017, and was refused on 6 January 2026.
Nwedo told the Commission that the officer who took that decision was Lieutenant General Mosikili, the same officer Lebeya had tasked with the Port Shepstone investigation and whose recommendation he had annotated. He submitted that she ought to have recused herself.
Nwedo also read one of the grounds given for the refusal, which was that Lebeya’s version differs from the versions of other SAPS witnesses. He asked whether the SAPS was implying that the versions should have been aligned.
Lebeya made the same application under the same instruction to the Khampepe Commission, where it was granted. Madlanga said he was not unsympathetic but doubted the Commission could assist, and suggested the remedy is to take the decision on review.
The rest of the day
Lebeya told the Commission that private investigator Paul O’Sullivan phoned him seeking the status of the Hawks investigation into Phala Phala, and said he was sitting with his friend Dr Bejani Chauke. Lebeya said he refused, and that their relationship deteriorated from that point. O’Sullivan told Parliament’s ad hoc committee in February 2026 that he had no involvement in Phala Phala.
On organised crime, Lebeya set out a collapse in identified groups. In 1995 there were 481 organised criminal groups with 2 178 primary suspects. In the first quarter of 1999 the figure was 793 groups with 11 658 individuals. As at 27 May 2025 there were 72 projects, 29 with the Hawks and 43 with the Detective Service. Lebeya said it means there is a failure elsewhere. Madlanga noted these are only the groups that were identified.
He also set out two oversight failures. The Ministerial Committee established under section 17I of the South African Police Service Act has never met in 16 years and has produced no annual report. The remuneration determination required under section 17CA(8) was begun in November 2018 and remains unfinalised, which Lebeya said will affect the recruitment now under way for his successor.
What happens next
Lebeya returns for cross examination on a date still to be arranged. Segeels-Ncube has asked him to produce the actual WhatsApp screenshots rather than the typed version in his statement, so that they can be displayed.
The question waiting for him is a narrow one. If the members were sent to Sandhurst to establish who was at the house, and the man who raised the alarm confirmed the answer himself at 17:17, what was still supposed to happen inside that yard.
