Allow him his day in court: Johan Booysen, seen here testifying at the Commission of Inquiry Into State Capture, has as much right as any citizen to defend himself but he needs to take
the nation into his confidence regarding the unit he led.
At a breakfast gathering this week, a colleague described a burst sewage pipe in his backyard.
What looked like a surface mess turned out to be a rupture nearly three metres underground.
Excavation teams had to dig deep to reach the true source. And, as a seismologist at the table observed, digging that deep introduces new risks: misread the fault lines and you risk collapse, with possible fatal consequences and a worsening problem of contamination.
The Cato Manor saga inside the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) looks increasingly like that backyard.
For more than a decade, South Africans have been told a relatively simple story: that Major General Johan Booysen and members of the Cato Manor unit were victims of a politically motivated prosecution born of State Capture factionalism.
That narrative hardened after the 2014 judgment of Judge Trevor Gorven set aside the racketeering authorisation on procedural grounds (Booysen vs Acting NDPP, KwaZulu-Natal high court, 2014). In the court of public opinion, that ruling was widely received as exoneration.
But that is not what the judgment did.
It addressed the legality of the authorisation process. It did not ventilate evidence. It did not test murder allegations under cross-examination.
It did not grant a permanent interdict barring future prosecution. The substance of the case — whether evidence existed to support allegations of unlawful killings, planted firearms and reward systems for shootings — has never been tried in open court. Gorven was explicit that such charges could only be adjudicated in a trial context.
The Nkabinde inquiry is only a quasi-judicial process, not a criminal trial but it has nevertheless served to bring actual evidence into the public domain.
After three days of evidence at the inquiry, former KwaZulu-Natal director of public prosecutions advocate Moipone Noko placed on public record allegations that are profoundly disturbing, confirming evidence already on record from whistleblower Aris Danikas.
Under oath, she described what she called a “blueprint” of unlawful killings within the Cato Manor unit and alleged that officers were rewarded for shootings and that firearms were planted to legitimise them (News24, 5 February 2026: “Noko tells inquiry that Cato Manor cops followed a blueprint of unlawful killings”).
The following day, she testified that Booysen knew members of the unit were being rewarded for shootings — an allegation he has previously denied (News24, 6 February 2026: “‘Very false’ — Noko says Booysen knew cops were rewarded for shootings”).
These are not procedural irregularities. There are allegations of systemic criminality.
Noko also addressed the long-standing claim that the prosecution of Booysen was malicious retaliation.
She rejected that outright. She testified that racketeering charges were authorised on the basis of sworn statements and docketed material.
She further explained that her earlier withdrawal of charges in the Toshan Panday matter followed concerns about police interference — including Booysen visiting an accused in police cells and regulating access to him.
That sequence is crucial.
For years, the country has been encouraged to believe that the NPA was digging up innocent men because it was captured by political conspirators.
But what if the excavation was halted prematurely? What if leadership, facing media pressure and reputational fallout, concluded that the fault lay with prosecutors rather than interrogating whether deeper structural rot existed within an elite police unit?
The December revelation that the NPA paid millions in settlement of wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution claims brought by Booysen and his colleagues added another layer of complexity (News24/City Press, 19 December 2025: “NPA pays out millions in secret settlement with former Hawks boss”).
That same publication later appended an editor’s note acknowledging that whistleblower Danikas had not initially been afforded a proper right of reply and apologised for the omission.
That episode illustrates how volatile and contested the narrative remains. When stories are tried in headlines rather than under oath, reputations can be destroyed before evidence is tested.
Journalism is often described as “a first rough draft of history”. Fact-checking the phrase reveals that it was the late Washington Post publisher Philip Graham who used those words but the full quotation reveals important nuance:
“So, let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never really be completed about a world we can never really understand.”
The Cato Manor saga is a case study of a rough draft hardening into orthodoxy. Social media, strategic briefings and repetition created a plausibility structure in which Booysen became the archetypal victim of State Capture.
It is a narrative he has forcefully advanced and defended. But repetition is not proof. And procedural victories are not factual vindication.
Let me be clear: Booysen is entitled to every procedural protection and every opportunity to defend himself.
He must now come without delay to the inquiry and place his version under oath. He must be subjected to professional cross-examination. I remain open to hearing his full account.
Justice demands no less.
Likewise, former National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi needs to return to explain herself. Both need to cast themselves on the mercy of Judge Nkabinde and her fellow panellists, who will likely not only decide whether advocate Andrew Chauke is unfit to hold office but offer their judgment on the parlous state of the NPA.
But justice also demands that the country not mistake the absence of a trial for proof of innocence.
The inquiry is the first forum in which substantive evidence has begun to be ventilated publicly. It does not possess the full powers of a judicial commission of inquiry. Yet it has already exposed how little of the underlying factual matrix has ever been tested.
Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi reminded the inquiry that nothing in the Gorven judgment prevents a lawfully authorised decision to reinstitute racketeering charges. If earlier procedural defects are cured, that door remains legally open. Whether it should be walked through is precisely the kind of question that requires independent scrutiny, not institutional defensiveness.
The NPA’s legitimacy has been gravely damaged — by factionalism, settlements, procedural collapse and public distrust. Surface cleaning will not restore it. The institution cannot renew itself while foundational allegations remain buried and untested.
The President should move urgently to establish a fully empowered judicial commission — with subpoena powers and a tightly defined mandate — to re-examine the Cato Manor prosecutions and the decision to withdraw racketeering charges. The objective would not be vengeance. It would be clarity.
When sewage floods a garden, the smell is immediate. But if you dig in the wrong place, you stabilise nothing while the rupture continues beneath your feet.
South Africa does not need another round of public relations. It needs excavation.
John Clarke is a writer, Justice, Peace and Equality monitor and social worker supporting whistleblowers and others suffering from failures within the criminal justice system. He has been monitoring the Nkabinde Inquiry and the current Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee hearings on issues of police, prosecutorial and parliamentary accountability and attitude to whistleblowing.