Khan's camp moves to have MK MP Shongwe and Zuma's aide Xulu prosecuted for 'misleading' Madlanga Commission

Major-General Feroz Khan’s camp wants the Madlanga Commission to consider referring MK Party MP Vusi Shongwe and Jacob Zuma’s assistant Londiwe Xulu to the National Prosecuting Authority for possible prosecution, on the allegation that they misled the commission on oath about a March meeting and a video call with the former Crime Intelligence officer.

The request comes from businessman Imraan Vally, who arranged the meeting. As Sunday World reported on 3 November, Vally was expected over the weekend to submit recordings, CCTV footage and a detailed affidavit challenging the two accounts.

The dispute turns on one afternoon at DRK Tactical’s Morningside offices in Durban on 8 March, where Vally, Shongwe, Xulu and businessman Yusuf Kajee met, and on a video call to Khan that was placed during it. Two versions of that afternoon now sit before the commission, and they cannot both be true.

Shongwe’s account to the commission is that he refused the call, felt intimidated and cooperated only because he wanted to leave the premises safely. He testified that Kajee repeatedly tried to connect him to Khan despite his refusal and eventually turned the telephone towards him when Khan answered. “I refused, and I informed them that I did not wish to take the call,” he told the commission.

Vally’s affidavit rejects that outright. “Before Kajee placed the call, Shongwe’s explicit consent was sought and given by him,” it states. “Nobody forced Shongwe to take the call, disregarded a refusal, threatened him, or arranged a surprise call to Khan.”

Vally says Shongwe greeted Khan as “my commander”, apologised for earlier statements and asked to meet him in Sandton. He alleges Shongwe said his attack on Khan was unintended and that he had meant to target businessman Paul O’Sullivan and another senior police officer. He further alleges Shongwe asked Khan for damaging information on President Cyril Ramaphosa and senior police officers including KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, and that Khan refused but agreed to a meeting at a venue convenient to Shongwe.

The bribery allegations are the heart of the matter, and Vally attacks them directly. Shongwe has said he was offered a Checkers security contract worth R2.2-million a month, R10-million in cash, access to bulletproof BMW vehicles, and help making his telephone “unhackable”, changing the location it displayed and working on its SIM card.

Vally calls those claims “flagrant fictional allegations”. He says the BMWs were DRK Tactical security vehicles and that Kajee merely discussed close-protection services after Shongwe complained about the dangers surrounding his work. “No money was ever offered or handed over,” Vally said, and argued that Shongwe “has not produced a single document, message, recording, witness or other piece of evidence to corroborate any of his allegations”.

Vally’s own explanation for the timing is that Shongwe kept the allegations “in reserve” and publicised them when they could advance his political interests ahead of the municipal elections.

Shongwe has not shifted. In a later SMWX interview he said he pretended to accept the offers because he feared rejecting them would put him in danger. “In the meeting I did agree because I was very scared,” he said, adding that he “had to play along” and feared he “might not make it to the airport”. Vally counters that Shongwe did not mention fearing for his life in his earlier appearances before Parliament or the commission.

On Xulu, Vally relies on two telephone conversations he recorded with her on 17 March and 30 May. They are not recordings of the disputed meeting. Vally says they capture later discussions about what happened and what Xulu knew.

Her sworn statement says she did not know the purpose of the meeting, could not hear the video call and did not know Khan was taking part. Vally says the recordings contradict that. “Xulu knew who we were calling,” he said. “She was in the same boardroom, very close to Shongwe and Kajee, and she was told of the purpose of the meeting.”

He also challenges her claim that she contacted Shongwe only once on Zuma’s instructions, pointing to other passages in which she describes later communications. His account of Zuma’s role is that the former president regarded Khan and Shongwe “like sons” and wanted to stop their disagreement escalating.

Vally has asked the commission to put the recordings and CCTV footage to Shongwe and Xulu and require them to explain the disputed versions. “I make this affidavit so that the commission has the true account of the meeting and so that Shongwe and Xulu can answer it,” he said.

The Madlanga Commission is the judicial inquiry examining, among other things, the conduct of senior figures in the police and intelligence services. Evidence given before it is sworn. A finding that a witness misled a commission is a serious matter, and the decision on whether to refer anyone to the NPA rests with the commission, not with Vally or Khan’s camp. The NPA has its own test for prosecution, and a referral is a request for the prosecuting authority to look, not a charge.

For ordinary South Africans the case is a window onto how the country’s intelligence and political worlds overlapped in the run-up to last year’s municipal elections, and onto the cost of that overlap: a public inquiry spending its time on which of two sworn accounts of a single afternoon is true, while the policing failures it was set up to examine wait their turn.

Shongwe and Xulu did not respond to messages sent on Monday. The commission has not yet ruled on the request.