- Cedric Nkabinde defended his corrected timeline, saying he used the minister’s calendar and travel records to verify key dates.
- New details emerged about Nkabinde’s first contact with businessman Brown Mogotsi during a 2024 zama zama crisis briefing.
- MPs clashed over whether his supplementary statement was lawful, warning that errors could expose the inquiry to legal review.
Cedric Nkabinde, the chief of staff to suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, opened his second appearance before Parliament’s ad hoc committee with an urgent defense of his corrected timelines.
He told MPs that any discrepancies in his original affidavit were the result of missing devices, not deliberate deception.
Under pointed questioning, Nkabinde said he went to significant lengths to reconstruct the dates that had previously plunged the hearing into disarray.
I consulted with the personal assistant to the minister, if I can have access to the minister’s calendar because the minister’s activities will be precise as to the dates I’m looking for.
— Cedric Nkabinde
He testified, emphasising that he relied on official diaries and travel logs after losing access to his own electronic records.
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He added that he instructed his lawyers to write to those holding his confiscated devices, asking them to help verify his dates, yet received “not even an acknowledgement” in response.
In the end, said Nkabinde, it was only through the minister’s calendar and itineraries that he could “be precise with the dates of a sequence of events that are relevant to the committee”.
New detail about Brown Mogotsi meeting
A significant portion of Nkabinde’s revised chronology centres on how and when he first made contact with North West businessman Brown Mogotsi, a figure whose name has repeatedly surfaced in allegations about illegal mining networks.
According to the corrected statement, Mogotsi’s introduction came during a meeting convened by Mchunu on 28 August last year.
This was at the height of a humanitarian crisis at the abandoned Stilfontein Mine, where hundreds of zama zamas were trapped underground amid Operation Vala Umgodi by the SAPS.
I confirm that it was at this meeting when the minister provided me with the contact details of Mr Brown Mogotsi, and instructed me that I should contact Mr Mogotsi and ask him to come with some local leaders to brief him on the situation.
— Cedric Nkabinde
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Nkabinde said he followed the standard protocol, checking with the minister’s personal assistant for available dates.
With August fully booked, September emerged as the earliest window for the meeting, Nkabinde said, adding that he contacted Mogotsi again in the second week of September, eventually proposing 30 September as a possible meeting date.
Pressed on whether Mogotsi was a close associate of the minister, a suggestion that has shadowed the inquiry, Nkabinde was adamant that he was not.
He denied ever portraying the businessman as a confidant, telling MPs his knowledge of Mogotsi was limited to the contact facilitated by the minister.
MPs warn of legal risk in statement dispute
While Nkabinde sought to clean up the record, committee members erupted into a dispute over whether his new submission was a lawful “supplementary” statement or an improperly altered replacement for his original affidavit.
Several MPs argued that the document “completely” shifts from the original and could expose the committee to future legal challenge.
EFF’s Leigh-Ann Mathys warned that the concern was not an attempt to delay proceedings but a safeguard against the inquiry being undermined.
READ: Mchunu became angry when he heard of plan to ‘wind down’ PKTT, wanted instant disbandment
It was to make a correction to that statement. We can sit through the whole day today, but when we do our findings and recommendations, we can be taken under review.
— Leigh-Ann Mathys
“We just want to make sure that we are doing the right thing.” Mathys added.
Patriotic Allince’s Ashley Qhoeke Sauls, however, read from the statement to show that Nkabinde explicitly designated it as a supplement, not a replacement.
“He calls it the ‘supplementary witness statement of Cedric Nkabinde’… Where he has not corrected something, it remains as stated in his original statement,” Sauls argued.
“My understanding is that these two statements now form the main statement.”
