Wild West? More Like Wild East as Ekurhuleni Metro Cops Go Rogue

An attempted assassination this week of a man implicated under oath in evidence before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry has raised urgent questions about witness safety and about how deeply corruption may have penetrated South Africa’s law-enforcement institutions.

The target, Wiandre Pretorius, was explicitly identified in sworn testimony as a participant in a fatal Brakpan operation in 2022 now under scrutiny by the commission.

Pretorius, with links to the security world, was named by a key state witness as having taken part in the interrogation of a hijacking suspect during a June 2022 operation involving members of the South African Police Service (SAPS), private security, and officers from the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD). According to that testimony, the suspect was subjected to “tubing” — a form of suffocation involving a plastic bag placed over a person’s head — and later died. The state witness further alleged that Pretorius played a central role in managing the aftermath once the suspect was dead.

The witness told the commission that after the suspect died, the then-EMPD chief, Julius Mkhwanazi, was called to the scene and later instructed that the body be disposed of.

Against that background, Thursday morning’s attempted assassination in Boksburg takes on far more serious significance. Unknown gunmen opened fire on Pretorius’s vehicle as he arrived home, striking his bakkie at least sixteen times. Pretorius escaped unharmed, reportedly sending a voice note asking for help after the attack, and Gauteng police have opened an attempted murder case. The commission has confirmed it was notified of the incident and expressed concern about the safety of people linked to its hearings.

The attempted assassination comes after the murder of the very witness who placed Pretorius and EMPD leadership under oath. Marius van der Merwe, publicly known as Witness D, was shot dead outside his Brakpan home in December, shortly after testifying before the inquiry. In that testimony, Van der Merwe alleged that after the suspect succumbed, Pretorius said, “He will never talk again,” later warning him that “it’s all of us in this and if anyone talks I will go to prison for killing them”. Van der Merwe told the commission he was ordered to dispose of the body and complied because, as he put it, “If I don’t comply I would probably be next.”

Weeks after making those allegations under oath, Van der Merwe was dead.

The picture that emerges from this sequence is not of a single rogue incident. In Van der Merwe’s account, EMPD officers were present during the operation, EMPD leadership was summoned after the suspect’s death, and EMPD authority was allegedly used to manage the aftermath. If the testimony before the commission is borne out, it suggests a police department functioning not as a barrier to abuse, but as a mechanism for containing it once it has occurred.

While no court of law has yet ruled on the allegations aired before the Madlanga Commission, the pattern of coincidences that has emerged strains credulity. Again and again, members of the EMPD appear at the centre of violent operations. Under the tenure of Julius Mkhwanazi, witnesses have described a sequence in which abuse is followed not by accountability, but by intervention from senior figures. Even allowing fully for the presumption of innocence, the accumulation of such overlaps goes beyond chance and demands rigorous judicial scrutiny.

What has followed that testimony is even more troubling. A key state witness who accused EMPD leadership of involvement in a torture killing has been murdered. A second individual named under oath in the same evidence trail has narrowly survived an attempt on his life. The sequence is stark: testify, then die; be implicated, then be targeted.