PROJECT DIVERSION: What Matthews Sesoko Revealed
Matthews Sesoko, IDAC’s Head of Investigations and Operations, gave the Madlanga Commission the fullest account yet of Project Diversion on 6 August 2026. His morning testimony described institutional trauma and a kidnapping that he says left him excluded from the operation. By the afternoon, cross examination showed he had been far more involved than his own written statement claimed, and that he had personally set in motion an unauthorised investigation of his own, of the same kind he criticises Advocate Andrea Johnson for running.
How IDAC is built
IDAC, the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, sits inside the National Prosecuting Authority and was designed to investigate and prosecute complex, high profile corruption. Until she resigned on 27 July 2026, mid testimony, Andrea Johnson led the unit as Investigating Director. Below her, 2 tracks are meant to check each other. Senior prosecutors, called DDPPs, lead the legal side of each case, while investigators, led by Sesoko, do the fieldwork. Both tracks report to the Operations Management Committee, known as the OMC, which is meant to be the checkpoint no case can bypass before an arrest or a court filing.
Sesoko told the commission he personally drafted the case selection rules in IDAC’s operational manual in August 2022. He described its purpose as deliberately multi layered and collective, intended to make case selection transparent, objective, auditable and defensible, and impossible to manipulate. That manual was signed by both Sesoko and Johnson on 16 October 2024 and sent to every IDAC employee on 22 October 2024. Johnson later told the commission it was just a draft. Sesoko disputes that characterisation.
Not a lawyer, still second in command
Sesoko was asked plainly by evidence leader Advocate Thabang Pooe whether he is an attorney or an advocate. He said no, he is not either. His career started as a prosecutor from 1993 to 1997, after which he moved into investigations, first at the police watchdog IPID, then at IDAC from 2021. He confirmed that in his current role, he cannot prosecute.
The reason he still holds effectively the second most senior position at IDAC comes down to how the unit divides its work. One track is legal, led by the DDPPs. The other is operational, led by Sesoko, covering the investigators and the fieldwork. His title, Head of Investigations and Operations, reflects exactly that split.
What Project Diversion targeted
Project Diversion is IDAC’s investigation into senior police Crime Intelligence officials, built off a complaint from Member of Parliament Fadiel Adams in November 2024. It covers allegations including a fictitious housebreaking, a forklift procured with Crime Intelligence funds, promotions treated as gratification, a property purchase and misused covert funds. Sesoko told the commission that unlike other IDAC matters, Project Diversion never went through the OMC. He said it was labelled a sensitive matter and handled directly by Johnson, outside the committee entirely.
What changed when he came back
Sesoko was kidnapped on 7 November 2025 while driving home. He was assaulted and robbed. His attackers demanded a firearm and assaulted him harder when he said he did not have one. They also demanded the password to his state issued laptop specifically, and took only that laptop to a separate house. He was off work for around 2 months.
When he returned on 13 January 2026, he found IDAC had rearranged itself around him, with no explanation given. He no longer chaired the OMC, a role that now rotated among the DDPPs. The 2 chief investigators who used to report to him, Dylan Perumal and a colleague named Nico Boy, now reported to Johnson, and had signed new performance agreements with her instead of him. His own role was reduced to a delegation letter covering leave and travel approvals. Asked why he did not push back, Sesoko told the commission he made a deliberate decision not to force his way in, and that he took the view that if the Investigating Director had not involved him, it was because she did not want him involved, and he respected that.
The cross examination
That testimony was all one sitting, on 6 August 2026, and Sesoko’s account changed after the lunch adjournment. In the afternoon session, Pooe walked him through a year of emails and meeting invites that contradicted his own written statement, which had opened by claiming he had no direct or substantial involvement in Project Diversion.
The record showed he was emailed the full Project Diversion briefing on 19 January 2025 and attended the meeting that formally introduced it on 22 January 2025. On 4 June 2025, Johnson wrote to him about the timing of the arrests, telling him she had asked Perumal to let her know when they would happen, that she wanted to wait 2 weeks, and that they should be able to pick up every suspect at once. Sesoko was also personally tasked with arranging a meeting with the Inspector General of Intelligence to obtain documents for the case. Faced with the record, Sesoko conceded the point. He said he accepted it, and that he was involved.
The forklift dispute
The forklift allegation matters because IDAC only has jurisdiction over complex, high value, high profile corruption. Asked about it, Sesoko first told the commission it involved several forklifts costing millions of rand. Commissioner Sandile Khumalo corrected him on the record. The actual allegation, in the commission’s own documents, is 1 forklift worth around R200,000. Pooe then reminded the commission that when Khumalo had earlier asked Johnson what a forklift that was never delivered had to do with IDAC’s mandate, Johnson could not explain that either.
The investigation he started himself
A second thread in Sesoko’s testimony cuts against his own defence. He told the commission he warned Johnson that the police minister’s chief of staff, a man named Nkabinde, was untrustworthy, and gave her derogatory material about him drawn from an older, unrelated case. That warning grew into a full investigation into Nkabinde, run using Crime Intelligence staff, with no formal authorisation and no OMC review.
Asked why he did not object, given that this is the same conduct he criticises Johnson for, Sesoko said nothing stopped him from saying it was wrong, and that he did not say it. He was also asked why he never escalated concerns other colleagues raised with him in emails through 2024 and 2025, all copied to him. He said he did not report it, because he felt it would not have assisted him anyway. Khumalo told him plainly that it looked like he was part of the problem. Sesoko said he would take responsibility for that.
What his contract actually requires
Commissioner Sesi Baloyi pressed Sesoko on a narrower question, namely what his own performance agreement actually requires of him when he disagrees with how a case is being run. Sesoko said his agreement requires him only to advise the Investigating Director, and that the final decision always sits with her.
What happens now
One further thread from the testimony is not yet confirmed. Sesoko told the commission that on 24 July 2026, Perumal approached him after a meeting and asked him to speak to prosecutor Ramsamy and investigator Rapetsu, so a problem could be fixed, warning that he and others could otherwise be in trouble. He said the issue involved forklift related documents that Rapetsu says were added to a file after the fact. Pooe put this account to Sesoko as what Ramsamy is expected to testify, since her own evidence was not yet complete at that point. Sesoko confirmed the conversation from his side, but Ramsamy has not yet given her own sworn account of it.
The Madlanga Commission resumes on Tuesday, 11 August 2026.
