The murder of a witness and two high-profile kidnap cases add sinister tones to parallel hearings investigating South Africa’s unprecedented law enforcement scandal. This comes while Parliament recently expressed concern about ‘incidents of intimidation and threats’ directed at its members. Sinister cases, now ranging from a murder to a death threat and kidnappings, are piling up around South Africa’s parallel hearings that are investigating accusations that a drug cartel has infiltrated law enforcement and politics.
The incidents together underscore how emboldened criminals have become. They also expose the dangers and gritty realities that underpin the law enforcement scandal and other types of deep-rooted organised crime across the country. Two hearings – the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry and Parliament’s ad hoc committee – are investigating the cartel infiltration accusations, which form the core of the scandal.
In the latest incident, Marius van der Merwe, a previous Madlanga Commission witness,was murderedoutside his Brakpan home in Gauteng on the evening of Friday, 5 December 2025. Over the weekend, the Madlanga Commission and the “natjoints’ structure working with it issued a statement saying the commission’s security would be bolstered. Last month, when Van Wyk testified before the Madlanga Commission, as a security measure he was identified simply as Witness D.
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A former Ekurhuleni metro police officer, he had detailed to the commission his role in an alleged 2022 cover-up involving the torture and murder of a robbery suspect. He said he had been tasked with the disposal of the body. Among those he implicated was suspended Ekurhuleni metro police chief Julius Mkhwanazi, who testified before the Madlanga Commission last week, days before Van Der Merwe was killed. Van Der Merwe was the director of a security company that was involved in cracking down on illegal mining – there are some suspicions that his killing was linked to that.
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