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FILE| Chairperson and commissioners at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry in Pretoria.
A new witness at the Madlanga Commission has testified that he found it unusual that Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Jacobs asked him questions about destroying cocaine exhibits before they had been analysed.
MADLANGA COMMISSION | Warrant Officer Bheki Setshedi says that when Lieutenant-Colonel Govan Jacob visited his office on 27 October 2021, the discussion focused on the destruction of the exhibits. pic.twitter.com/t64EFk6nWU
— SABC News (@SABCNews) June 2, 2026
Warrant Officer Bheki Setshedi, a forensic drug analyst at the South African Police Service (SAPS), was testifying earlier about the 541-kilogram cocaine consignment stolen from Hawks premises in Port Shepstone in 2021.
Setshedi told Commission Chairperson Justice Madlanga that it concerned him that Jacobs wanted a specific type of analyst to be involved in examining the exhibits.
“What I was explaining to him is that since the case came, since the case was brought to the lab by an investigating officer, those cases are allocated to analysts, to any analyst that is in the lab. Then, the cases that we bring as crime scene investigators, we bring in the lab, register them, and allocate them back to us. That was it. So if you fetched, then you analyse.”
MADLANGA COMMISSION | Warrant Officer Bheki Setshedi has told the commission that investigating officers are required, under the prescribed procedures, to submit all exhibits from drug seizures to the Forensic Science Laboratory. pic.twitter.com/qhdl2x65hc
— SABC News (@SABCNews) June 2, 2026
