Who investigates the investigators? What the Madlanga commission found inside IDAC

"If they call you, you leave the country."

That line was played to the Madlanga commission on 30 July 2026. It comes from a phone call that a state prosecutor, Advocate Drushantha Ramsamy, secretly recorded. The voice on the other end, Ramsamy says, belonged to her boss, Advocate Andrea Johnson, the head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC).

Johnson did not know she was being recorded. She has not answered the claim from the witness stand. The allegations are untested.

Two months on, a simple question hangs over it. Who investigates the investigators?

What is the Madlanga commission investigating now?

The commission was set up in July 2025 to look at claims that criminals had reached into the police. We covered how it started, and the case of a jailed police general, in our Sibiya and Matlala timeline.

What changed this year is the target. The commission is now hearing evidence about IDAC, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and police Crime Intelligence. These are the people meant to catch the crooks.

Entrepreneur Vusi Thembekwayo put it simply in a talk that has passed 812,000 views on his channel. The story is no longer only about whether corruption exists, he says. It is about how far it may have reached into the systems built to stop it.

Why did Andrea Johnson resign?

Johnson testified for six days in July. She first missed a summons on 13 July. Her lawyers said she was in hospital.

On the stand she gave a lot of ground. She agreed she was wrong to treat the case against Crime Intelligence head Dumisani Khumalo as one for IDAC, and admitted she never checked the qualifications at the heart of the charges herself.

On 26 July she asked to leave. President Cyril Ramaphosa accepted her resignation the next day, with immediate effect. In her letter, she said she had faced "unprecedented attacks" over five months, linked to IDAC's work on Crime Intelligence, Engineering News reported.

On the same day, 27 July, the NPA withdrew the Crime Intelligence case that IDAC had built.

Photo: HelenOnline / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What did Andrea Johnson say in the secret recording?

Ramsamy told the commission she recorded the call because she no longer trusted Johnson. She said Johnson had thrown her "under the bus" during her own testimony, EWN reported.

On the recording, a voice said to be Johnson's swears about the commission. She allegedly says of chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga: "He makes faces. They laugh with each other while you are still answering." She adds: "It's so unprofessional," The Citizen reported.

Then comes the line about leaving the country. She also allegedly says: "We have to figure out a way for you not to go there."

Reports differ on the date of the call. Some say 22 July, others 26 July. Ramsamy went further than the tape. She accused her former boss of driving an "orchestrated attack" on senior police officers, IOL reported.

The commission said Johnson will get a Rule 3 notice. That is a formal chance to answer, in writing or in person. She is presumed innocent.

What is the link between Andrea Johnson and Feroz Khan?

Feroz Khan is a suspended deputy head of Crime Intelligence. A retired Hawks officer, Colonel Kobus Roelofse, told the commission that in 2018 Johnson allegedly let a police docket reach Khan while he was under investigation.

Johnson first called the claims "vague". Then she used her constitutional right not to incriminate herself. She said the matter sits in an NPA docket that will decide whether she should be prosecuted. The Hawks have opened a probe into her.

At first she said her memory "needed jogging" and called Khan "very affable". Then WhatsApp messages were shown. In them, Khan greets her with "hi gorgeous", invites her and her children to dinner and asks for help, IOL reported. Co-commissioner Sandile Khumalo said the messages painted a different picture from her first account.

A close friendship is not a crime. But it was not what she first told the commission.

Who else is under the spotlight?

The last row matters most to families. A police audit found problems in at least 120 of the 121 dockets. At least five held orders for immediate arrests that were never carried out. A senior officer told the commission: "We owe this nation an apology."

Are Madlanga commission witnesses safe?

Not all of them. Marius van der Merwe, known as Witness D, was shot dead outside his Brakpan home on 5 December 2025. He had given evidence in private three weeks earlier.

Feroz Khan was shot in Houghton on 28 June 2026, three days before he was due to testify. He survived. Police found a handwritten note and a laptop hidden in the car's spare wheel space, eNCA reported. No motive has been confirmed.

His lawyer says it is part of a plan to discredit him. Madlanga warned his team to stop speculating. Questions about that night are still being asked.

Photo: Hansm / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Who does IDAC report to?

This is the question Thembekwayo keeps coming back to. Who is the watchdog for the watchdog?

IDAC sits inside the NPA. It began in 2019 as a temporary unit to chase state capture cases. A law signed in May 2024 made it permanent and gave it its own investigators. Its head reports to the National Director of Public Prosecutions, now Andy Mothibi.

The law also created an IDAC oversight judge, who handles complaints about abuse of power inside the unit. Retired judge Takalani Joseph Raulinga took the job, and his office only started working in July 2026. That was the same month Johnson testified.

IDAC now has an acting head, Advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara.

Will IDAC be shut down?

Maybe. In August, Madlanga raised shutting it down after IDAC's own head of investigations admitted it had repeatedly failed to follow its own rules. "I have no idea what we will recommend in the end," he said, IOL reported.

Parliament is split. On 30 September, the DA's Glynnis Breytenbach said: "We think Idac should be closed down." The MK party wants it closed too. EFF leader Julius Malema said: "There's nothing wrong with Idac." The ANC wants to fix it, not close it.

This week, Parliament's ad hoc committee finished a draft report of nearly 800 pages, TimesLIVE reported. People named in it get three weeks to reply. The final report is due on 30 October.

Why does this matter to ordinary South Africans?

Thembekwayo's reason is personal. His father was shot nine times when he was 13. The family went looking for justice twice, he has said, and the docket vanished both times.

That is the story of the 121 dockets too. It is the story of every family waiting for a case that never reaches court. Our look at how few state capture cases ended in jail asked the same thing.

Arrests are not convictions. Nobody named here has been found guilty of anything. But for the first time, the people who decide which dockets live and which ones die are being asked to explain themselves in public.

On 30 October, Parliament says what it thinks IDAC should become. In January, the Madlanga commission hands the president its own answer.