Witness D's testimony exposes police cover-up at Madlanga Commission, leading to his assassination

The Madlanga Commission was jolted on Friday when it confirmed that Witness D, had been shot dead outside his Brakpan home, weeks after delivering testimony alleging an orchestrated murder cover-up involving suspended EMPD acting chief, Julius Mkhwanazi.

Witness D’s identity was formally released following his death. He was Marius van der Merwe, the man whose harrowing account of a 2022 killing and its alleged cover-up set off one of the commission’s most explosive sessions.

Van der Merwe was shot dead outside his home in Brakpan home in Ekurhuleni on Friday night, the police said, adding that he was silenced with two bullets. 

A joint operation turns into a killing

In his partially in-camera testimony, Van der Merwe recounted how the ordeal began on April 15, 2022, when security firm boss Kobus Janse van Rensburg repeatedly pressured him to join a joint operation targeting a robbery suspect in Brakpan. 

Although caring for his sick son, he eventually agreed.

At the suspect’s home, Van der Merwe found what he called “a troubling mix” of individuals: EMPD officers aligned with Mkhwanazi, two SAPS members he found suspicious, and Jaco Hanekom, whom he described as “a SAPS informer of ill repute.”

He said he told Van Rensburg immediately that he was uncomfortable. Several of the officers present, he testified, had long been linked to criminal activity.

The suspect was captured and allegedly admitted to a warehouse break-in.

He begged officers not to assault him and even offered a R500,000 bribe.

Instead, Van der Merwe said, officers dragged him into a room where a search uncovered forensic bags, ammunition, burglary tools and dockets linked to other crimes.

Moments later, he saw torture unfold. Officers were “tubing” the suspect — suffocating him with a plastic bag — while another fetched water.

When Van der Merwe later asked if the man had revealed anything, an officer replied ominously: “He will never talk again.”

The alleged cover-up

Panic set in as the group scrambled to stage a scene. Officers discussed planting a gun on the body. One vowed to phone crime intelligence boss Feroz Khan “to fix this.” 

Hanekom insisted “the chief”, Mkhwanazi, would handle the fallout.

Last month, retired EMPD deputy chief Revo Spies told the commission that Mkhwanazi had previously been summoned by his SWAT unit to help clean a murder scene in Brakpan. 

Van der Merwe’s account mirrored that allegation almost exactly.

According to Van der Merwe, Mkhwanazi arrived in a dark tracksuit and issued a simple instruction: the body had to be dumped — preferably in a mineshaft or a dam.

Then he looked directly at Van der Merwe, the man with the bakkie.

“I thought they would kill me next,” he told the commission.

He drove the body to Nigel Dam and left it partially submerged. The victim has still not been identified.

Responding to this, Mkhwanazi admitted to the commission that he went to the scene around 3am after receiving a call from Hanekom about an operation that went wrong. 

He denied being involved in the incident but said he suspected that Hanekom and the other officers had something. 

“I suspected that they got the success and did something about it,” he said. 

A witness silenced

Van der Merwe said some officers went out drinking afterwards. He burned his clothes the next morning.

When he later returned to the dam with Van Rensburg, unmarked police vehicles were already on the scene.

Fearing the group he had witnessed, Van der Merwe eventually reported the crime to the Hawks and IPID. He said investigators warned him the officers involved were “extremely dangerous.

Weeks after his testimony, he was shot dead outside his Brakpan home.

“I fear this group and others like it,” he told the commission. “If they’re not stopped, public trust in the police will collapse.”

Acting Gauteng Police Commissioner General Fred Kekana said a manhunt has been launched for suspects, believed to have been travelling in a white Nissan NP200 bakkie with a canopy.

kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.za 

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