Police Hit Costs R2.5 Million – Madlanga Commission hears
An IPID investigator told the Madlanga Commission on 12 August 2026 that a Durban police task team commander received cash payments totalling R2 712 612 in the 16 months after Bevan Loftus and 4 other men were shot dead by his team. Loftus’s father had gone to the High Court to try to stop the killing one day before it happened. The commission also heard that the officer, then a captain, has since been promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and that nobody in his chain of command would say who he actually answers to.
A new front opens at the commission
For the past 3 weeks, the Madlanga Commission has focused on the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption and its suspended head, Advocate Andrea Johnson. On 12 August 2026, the commission’s Day 157 sitting stepped away from that thread. Deputy Director Len Barnabas John of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in KwaZulu-Natal took the stand instead, to give evidence on SAPS task teams operating in Durban.
John’s mandate is narrower than the commission’s. IPID investigates deaths at the hands of police, under the IPID Act. But evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson SC told the commission the evidence was relevant because a police unit that can kill without consequence becomes a tool any criminal with enough money can use.
The killing
On 1 April 2023, a task team led by then-Captain Deenadayalan “Deena” Govender raided a flat in Morningside, Durban, and shot dead 5 men: Bevan Loftus, Sihle Zondi, Ryan Santos, Chase Fynn and Michigan Hippolyte. Police have maintained that the men opened fire first and that officers returned fire in self-defence.
IPID’s investigation disputes that account. John told the commission the flat required permission from downstairs security before anyone could go up, making a surprise shootout unlikely. Despite the police version that all 5 men fired on the task team, no officer was hit. One member, Pedro Rodriguez, had a bullet hole in his bulletproof vest with no injury underneath it.
A warning filed one day too late
Bevan Loftus’s father, Gregory Loftus, a former SAPS member, approached the Durban High Court for an interdict to stop Govender and the SAPS from killing his son. The application was filed on 31 March 2023, the day before the raid. In his affidavit, Gregory Loftus said police had already told him, on more than one visit to his home, that they were not there to arrest Bevan but to kill him, and had told him to get his son’s funeral cover in order.
The money
IPID’s theory is that the killing benefited Clive Naicker, owner of Roadstar Towing and Trucking and a rival of Loftus in Durban’s tow truck industry. Naicker has denied wrongdoing and has previously described Loftus as a dangerous criminal. On 25 January 2023, Loftus phoned Naicker to confront him about an alleged R2.5 million contract on his life. John told the commission Naicker recognised Loftus’s voice within 2 lines of the call, which he took as evidence Naicker already knew what the call was about. Commission chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga questioned whether that inference necessarily followed.
John set out the financial trail supporting the allegation: R2 034 350 in cash deposited into accounts belonging to Govender and his wife, also a SAPS member, between August 2022 and December 2023; a further R179 800 and R200 000 paid in cash into a conveyancing attorney’s trust account toward a R2.3 million property purchase; and an unexplained R298 462 transfer into Govender’s home loan account. The total comes to R2 712 612. Chaskalson told the commission this is roughly 9 times Govender’s annual take-home pay, which John said was under R26 000 a month at the time.
Commissioner Sandile Khumalo SC asked whether the money could be traced back to Naicker. Chaskalson said it could not. The deposits are cash, the source is unknown, and the deposits themselves appear to have been made by Govender and his wife. The total lines up with the alleged R2.5 million contract, but no evidence yet links the funds directly to Naicker.
“The killing of Bevan Loftus, Sihle Zondi, Ryan Santos, Chase Fynn and Michigan Hippolyte has a range of disturbing features that are consistent with a deliberate extrajudicial killing paid for by an organised crime competitor,” John told the commission.
The evidence used to justify targeting Loftus
The 2 case dockets used to justify targeting Loftus rest almost entirely on one witness, Jonathan David Thomas. Thomas was murdered alongside a colleague in December 2022, months before the raid that killed Loftus. A police note about tracing Loftus was written into the same docket after Thomas was already dead.
When the shooting took place, between 12h30 and 13h00, IPID was only called out at 14h35. Investigators arrived at 15h00 to find the task team already gone, and nobody at the scene could say where they had gone.
A wider pattern, and an unclear chain of command
John also told the commission of a second case in Pinetown, where members under Captain Pedro Rodriguez fired 14 rounds at an armoured Toyota Fortuner on the M13, trying to kill the driver. The driver survived and phoned Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi himself, who directed him to a shopping mall where senior officers were waiting. That case is linked to the murder of taxi boss Reginald “Boy-Boy” Dladla, one of whose named suspects was shot dead by a different task team while allegedly being arrested.
3 task teams operate in Durban, covering drugs, cash-in-transit robbery and taxi violence. John said it is unclear who commands them. Govender’s direct superior, Brigadier Nyuswa, told IPID the team does not fall under him, and pointed instead to Major General Senona or Mkhwanazi. John said Mkhwanazi personally gave press statements after most of the shootings these task teams were involved in.
What has not yet been proven
Commissioner Sesi Baloyi SC put it to John plainly, asking whether the evidence so far shows organised crime syndicates have captured these task teams as a matter of policy, rather than one officer taking one payment. Chaskalson told the commission a further witness from Crime Intelligence will address that question in a session held in camera. Until that testimony is heard, the broader claim of syndicate infiltration remains a working theory rather than an established finding.
Govender has not yet testified before the commission.
