Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga put a blunt question to former Independent Directorate Against Corruption head Andrea Johnson on Wednesday: “General Masemola was wrongly lumped with these other people, you must accept?” Johnson acknowledged the point.
The exchange, before the Constitutional Court, cut to the heart of a case that has shadowed suspended National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola. He stands charged alongside Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, three company directors and 12 police officials in connection with the allegedly irregular award of a R360 million Medicare24 contract. The others face fraud and corruption charges. Masemola does not. His charge is a single contravention of the Public Finance Management Act, stemming from his role as South African Police Service accounting officer.
That distinction drove much of Wednesday’s hearing.
Johnson argued that Masemola delayed acting on a risk audit from SAPS chief risk officer General Charity Matlou, which had flagged the Medicare24 tender as unlawful and recommended stopping further payments. Because of that delay, she said, approximately R50 million in additional funds were released before the contract was halted. He was charged under the PFMA for that inaction, not for participating in the underlying fraud.
Madlanga was unconvinced. At face value, he told Johnson, the decision “seems to me that this must have been done to embarrass him, to taint him and to make the public see him as having been complicit in fraud and corruption.” Johnson denied any intention to embarrass Masemola but conceded the matter should have been handled separately.
Commissioner Sisi Baloyi pressed a jurisdictional concern: whether a standalone PFMA charge fell within Idac’s statutory mandate at all, given that the mandate is limited to offences within its jurisdiction. Madlanga sharpened the point. The charges against Masemola were framed as “additional charges,” he noted, which by definition should attach to offences already within Idac’s mandate. “On what basis does Idac have the mandate to charge General Masemola under the PFMA standing all by itself?” he asked.
Johnson’s answer was that the Medicare24 investigation covered multiple accused facing different offences, and not every accused was charged with every offence. The PFMA charge arose from the same alleged corruption and commercial crime inquiry, she argued, tying Masemola’s conduct to the broader scheme.
Commissioner Dumisani Khumalo challenged the timeline Johnson relied on. Accounting officers, he said, routinely need time to assess legal advice before terminating contracts, since such decisions can trigger court challenges. “One does not, in the normal course, accept advice and act immediately.” He added that the charge sheet created a misleading impression by suggesting the R50 million payment occurred after Masemola had already been advised to terminate the contract. General Matlou’s report, Khumalo observed, did not say Masemola took too long or that the report was ignored.
Baloyi drew the sharpest inference of the day. Including Masemola in the indictment on a PFMA charge alone “appears to have been a scheme simply to get him arrested and brought before court,” she said. It should have been obvious to the prosecutor, she continued, that Masemola was not alleged to have committed fraud or corruption. “Accepting that it would have been obvious that this charge sheet is wholly inadequate for purposes of [the Idac] mandate, there has to be another reason why you approved the charge,” Baloyi said. “To me, it gives the impression that the whole purpose of this charge sheet was simply to have him appear in court.”
Madlanga closed off Johnson’s central justification directly. “You cannot force the additional charges merely by relating them to charges faced by other people that have nothing to do with him whatsoever.” Johnson held her ground on one point: had the Medicare24 corruption not occurred, Masemola would never have faced a PFMA charge at all, making the violation inseparable from the underlying alleged scheme.
Whether the court accepts that link, or concludes that the charging decision was structurally flawed from the start, will determine what comes next for Masemola and for Idac’s credibility as an independent body.