News24 | UPDATE | ‘I was following orders’ – Sibiya turns to High Court in urgent bid to return to work

Deputy police commissioner Shadrack Sibiya was asked to take leave after being accused of links to criminal syndicates and meddling in political murder probes.

• The deputy national police commissioner for crime detection, Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya, has launched an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to return to work.
• He was earlier this month made to step down.
• This after he was implicated by KwaZulu-Natal top cop Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in allegations that the country’s criminal justice system had been captured by criminals.

Embattled top cop Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya has turned to the courts in an urgent bid to return to work, charging that his orders regarding the disbandment of the police’s political killings task team and what happened to its dockets came from national police commissioner General Fannie Masemola.

Sibiya was implicated by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi at a press conference in Durban earlier this month, where Mkhwanazi made explosive allegations around criminals having captured the country’s criminal justice system.

A commission of inquiry has since been established to probe Mkhwanazi’s claims, and Sibiya as well as Police Minister Senzo Mchunu – who was also implicated – have both been made to step aside in the interim.

On Friday, Sibiya launched an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for an order overturning what he says was a direction from Masemola to “stay at home, pending an investigation”. He also wants the order to interdict Masemola “from instituting parallel proceedings and action” against him pending the conclusion of the commission.

READ | Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya asked to take leave of absence amid Mkhwanazi claims

“The national commissioner is aware that the instructions regarding the political killings task team did not emanate from me,” Sibiya said in the papers.

“The instructions regarding the task team were issued to the national commissioner by the erstwhile minister of police… He in turn conveyed the instruction to me in January 2025.”

Political meddling

At the press conference, Mkhwanazi charged that the task team had been disbanded after a group of KwaZulu-Natal officers were sent to Gauteng to assist in investigations into the April 2024 assassination of Vaal engineer Armand Swart and linked the weapons used in that murder to a string of other high-profile crimes.

He said 121 case dockets were subsequently taken away from the team at the direction of Sibiya acting “on the instruction of the minister of police” and without the national commissioner or Mkhwanazi’s authority.

He further said the dockets had been sitting idle at head office since then and that Sibiya “withdrew all these dockets and they are sitting in an archive in his office in Pretoria”.

Sibiya in his court papers, however, sought to “correct” Mkhwanazi’s version.

He put up a letter he said Mchunu wrote to Masemola on 31 December, saying: “My observation in this regard is that further existence of this team is no longer required nor is it adding any value to policing in South Africa. I further direct that the political killings task team be disbanded immediately.”

The minister further requested a preliminary report.

Sibiya said he received an email from the national commissioner’s office three days later to “communicate the deactivation” to the team and submit a “close-up report”.

He subsequently wrote to Crime Intelligence boss Major General Dumisani Khumalo – who was last month arrested in connection with alleged unlawful senior appointments – and stressed that he indicated “comprehensive handover protocols were to be established”.

The dockets

Sibiya said he was not in attendance when the dockets were ultimately handed over and that there were subsequent attempts to transfer the dockets to the KwaZulu-Natal murder and robbery units but that Mkhwanazi refused. Masemola’s office then tasked Sibiya’s team with taking on the cases, he said.

He said, however, that they had not been given any funding and insisted it was “unreasonable” to expect them to wrap up that many cases in three months.

“I was not involved in any of the decisions that have impacted my department’s inability to do the work which I am accused of hindering,” he said.

Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala

During his press briefing, Mkhwanazi also linked Sibiya to the likes of power broker Brown Mogotsi and attempted murder-accused businessman Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala via communications he said were recovered from the latter’s cellphone.

Sibiya in his papers also addressed this.

“The claim that I am associated with persons under investigation and that this allegation necessarily means I am of dubious character smacks of dishonesty, is false, irrational and wholly unsubstantiated,” he said.

“There is no evidence of such association as none exists. There is also no basis for the assertion that the alleged association has elements of dishonesty. I have never been dishonest to my employer.”

Unlawful

Sibiya ultimately maintained that the investigations into him as well as the instruction he had received from Masemola to “stay at home” pending the outcome thereof – which he described as a “disguised suspension” – were “unlawful” as the commissioner was not empowered to make these decisions, he charged.

He accused Masemola of having been biased or having “created a reasonable apprehension of bias” and taking the decisions “in bad faith for an ulterior motive”.

Masemola had relied on “untested allegations that came from a single source in a media briefing” and had “unjustified favour or inclination” towards the allegations, he said.

He also argued his suspension would obstruct the commission’s work and subject him to double jeopardy.

Sibiya accused Mkhwanazi of having defamed him and said his attorneys had sent him a letter of demand.

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In the interim, he said his current employment status created an “ongoing impression” that there was a prima facie case against him and that this perception had placed his life in danger as there had been death threats on the back of the “unlawful suspension and the announcement of the parallel investigations”.

“I have been stripped of a driver and protector, and I have been left destitute to protect myself and my family on my own during this very volatile time,” he added.

Sibiya wants the case heard on 26 August.