‘Humble, respectful and romantic’ – Saps Brigadier on her relationship with Matlala

Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala’s wife may have learned, like the rest of South Africa, on Thursday that her husband was in an on-and-off relationship with Saps Brigadier Rachel Matjeng, the section head for quality management: criminal record and crime scene management at the forensic services division in Pretoria. Matjeng testified at the Madlanga commission after she was identified as one of the police officers who had received money from Matlala. Matjeng told the commission that her role at the Saps does not involve the awarding of tenders.

She said she was not aware that Matlala’s company, Medicare24, had placed a bid for the tender either. “In March 2024, I think I was six months into my new responsibility as the section head of quality management, criminal record and crime scene management, I became aware of the health risk manager contract,” explained Matjeng. “The awareness was triggered by the coming to an end of the previous health risk manager contract, Metropolitan.

There were discussion of the expired contract of Metropolitan. It was further said that a three-month extension was granted to Metropolitan until a new service provider for health risk management is appointed. “That’s when I requested more information so that I could understand the implementation of the medical surveillance and biological monitoring programme.

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“Later in the month of June, the management of quality management was informed by the division supply chain management that the new health risk manager service provider contract was awarded to the Medicare24 Tshwane District.” She said she informed her supervisor, Major-General Manamela, of her on-and-off relationship with Matlala. “Major-General Manamela indicated that this is part of my scope of work and cannot relegate that responsibility, especially since the facilitation and coordination of medical surveillance and biological monitoring programme is solely the responsibility of the environmental compliance officer, which we will refer to as ECO, and if there are challenges, I still need to address them professionally. “It must be noted that I was not part of the bid specification committee or bid evaluation committee, nor bid adjudication committee, and was not aware of the service providers that submitted the bids for the tender or any engagement with any previous health risk manager that was contracted by Saps.”

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