A father's fight for his daughter now before Madlanga Commission

For one father, known in court only as Mr M, the concern is simple: keeping his teenage daughter safe. That is why his name is being withheld. Yet it is his family’s experience, captured in an audio recording played at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, that has now drawn the attention of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry and set in motion a new line of investigation.

The commission announced on Tuesday, through its spokesperson Jeremy Michaels, that it will obtain a statement from socialite Serge Cabonge, the man heard in the recording allegedly claiming he used his police connections to help secure the withdrawal of criminal charges against the daughter of someone linked to the commission.

“Mr Cabonge has previously been mentioned at hearings before the Commission. The Commission will engage with Mr Cabonge and obtain his statement as part of its broad investigation into matters falling within its terms of reference and his mention of the Commission in the recording,” Michaels said. The commission added that it would make no further comment at this stage.

The recording runs roughly 25 minutes. It captures a conversation between Cabonge and Mr M, and was played during the continuation of the bail hearing of former deputy national police commissioner Shadrack Sibiya, who faces allegations of rape, the sexual grooming of a minor and human trafficking, charges the state is opposing his release on.

In the conversation, Cabonge allegedly described a close relationship with a man he said sat in the front row of the Madlanga Commission hearings. He claimed the man had previously been a judge president, and that he had helped the man’s family when his daughter faced charges after a collision in Sandton involving a woman carrying a child.

According to Cabonge’s account, the woman’s mother came to him for assistance once police began making inquiries into the incident. He claimed he obtained the case number, contacted people to check on the matter and used his connections to intervene. Within about a week, he said, the case was withdrawn. The recording did not identify the man allegedly linked to the commission, and no name was mentioned during the conversation.

Detective-Sergeant Nokukhanya Ndlovu, the investigating officer in Sibiya’s case, told the court that Mr M had confirmed the conversation was his and that the recording was authentic. She said the recording had allegedly been sent to Sibiya’s wife, Sizakele Dlamini, and that she had been verifying an affidavit submitted by Dlamini along with supporting documents provided by the defence. Ndlovu added that she was also investigating whether Mr M had previously stated that the case involving his daughter had been withdrawn.

Meanwhile, the recording’s place in the bail hearing itself proved contentious. Sibiya’s lawyer, Estelle Killian SC, questioned why it was being played in court at all, particularly since Sibiya was not the subject of the conversation. The defence subsequently indicated it no longer wished to introduce the recording and made it available to the state. The court heard that the investigation into the recording, including the circumstances surrounding an accompanying note, remains ongoing.

For the commission, the decision to seek a statement from Cabonge signals an intent to establish further details about his claims and his reference to a person allegedly connected to its proceedings. The inquiry was established to investigate criminality, political interference and corruption within South Africa’s criminal justice system, and the claims in the recording sit squarely within the kind of conduct it was created to examine.

For Mr M and his daughter, the matter now moves from a private conversation to a public inquiry. The details of what happened after that Sandton collision are set to be tested under formal scrutiny, and the question of who Cabonge was describing may soon have an answer.