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OPINION: Shadrack Sibiya did not so much give testimony as stage a one-man show titled Escape From Yes or No. It was gripping. It was draining. It should have come with an intermission — and a therapist on standby. In the narrow gap between yes and no, accountability was publicly executed.
By Themba Khumalo
After watching the Madlanga Commission the other day, I ended up walking in tight, furious circles around the living room like an unhinged person whose house has been invaded by nonsense.
I kept stopping. I kept starting again. I kept saying, out loud, to absolutely no one, “No. No. That can’t be what he meant.”
Well, it was always exactly what he meant.
This was not a man misspeaking under pressure. This was a method in which clarity was treated as a hostile act and precision as a trap laid by enemies of context. Meaning was not denied outright; it was thinned, diluted, stretched until it could pass through the narrowest possible gap without ever quite arriving.
That was how Lieutenant-General Shadrack Sibiya, National Deputy Commissioner of Police, ended up before a judicial commission, not answering questions so much as outlasting them. Questions were met with patience, courtesy, and an aggressive commitment to never landing anywhere solid. Each sentence advanced bravely and then dissolved just before it might inconvenience its speaker.
Sibiya did not refuse to answer. That would be rude. Instead, he offered answers in instalments that never added up to a whole, like a man paying rent with loose change and insisting the landlord respect the effort.
“Did you ask Witness F to facilitate communication?”
It was a simple question. Yes or no.
In another universe — one governed by gravity and verbs — this would end there.
In Sibiya’s universe, it opened a portal.
“I did not officially ask him to be a middleman…”
Officially entered first, cleared its throat, and took control of the room. It became the load-bearing beam of the entire testimony. It did all the heavy lifting while reality was asked to wait outside.
Unofficially — socially, conversationally, in that strange universe where things happen without quite happening — the sentence began to loosen its grip on itself. The question was no longer whether something happened, but whether it happened in a way that could be pinned down without causing discomfort.
Once that door opened, once yes and no were rendered optional, the hearing was no longer about facts. It was about endurance.
This is where the wildlife arrived, and with it the quiet realisation that reality had been downgraded to a suggestion.
“I categorically deny that I acquired or received any impalas. No animal was ever delivered to my plot.”
Categorically is a brave word. It expects applause. It plants its feet, folds its arms, and waits for the room to accept that the matter is closed.
But the room did not oblige. Because ‘categorically’ only works if the ground beneath it stays still.
Messages appeared. References to animals drifted into view the way smells do when someone insists they have not been cooking. Photographs hovered. Names of antelope were exchanged with the weary familiarity of people discussing relatives they would rather not claim.
The impala, having been ‘categorically’ denied, refused to remain hypothetical.
The denial adapted: No animal was delivered. If an animal was delivered, it was not received. If it was received, it was not received by me. If it was received by me, it was not from him. If it was from him, it was not an impala. If it were an impala, it may have been a blesbok. If it were a blesbok, then we are now discussing something else entirely — possibly agricultural, possibly philosophical, certainly not criminal.
You could feel the inquiry’s soul strain slightly, like a table bearing too much weight. We were no longer talking about meat, bones, transport or delivery. We were talking about definitions — what it means to “receive”, whether possession requires intention, whether an animal that exists in messages can be said to exist at all.
Somewhere in this fog, the original statement — no animal was ever delivered to my plot — remained technically intact, just like a coat hung carefully over a chair while the house burns down around it.
This was not a denial. Denial would be cleaner. This was decomposition.
And the remarkable thing is how calmly it was done.
Sibiya did not sound flustered. He sounded somewhat confident. As though the impala problem was not that it happened, but that it had been poorly categorised. As though the real crime here was a failure of filing.
Everything slipped into a strange, airless place where objects became optional and events negotiable. The antelope was reduced to a rumour with hooves. A logistical misunderstanding. A creature that may or may not have existed.
If a scriptwriter had submitted this, an editor would have sent it back with a single, despairing note: “Be realistic. Nobody will believe the impala sub-plot.”
Just when you thought it could not possibly get any stranger, technology was introduced. An audio recording surfaces. A recording in which Cat Matlala allegedly claims to have bought animals.
The response was delivered with the calm authority of someone teaching someone else to tie their shoelaces incorrectly and insisting it was the only correct method.
“It was AI-generated. The phone was tampered with.”
Of course it was. Naturally. Obviously.
Somewhere, in a basement server farm that may or may not exist, a rogue algorithm apparently woke up one morning, stretched its silicon limbs, and decided: Today I will fabricate evidence of antelope-based corruption.
The beauty — or terror — of this moment was how effortlessly the testimony allowed reality to be borrowed, altered and returned. Facts were no longer fixed; they were re-invented.
The commissioners — trained, patient, immune to theatrics — sat across the table while an antelope may or may not have existed, while audio may or may not have been produced, while Sibiya negotiated the laws of physics like an accountant adjusting the ledger for air.
How can I forget the message: “Ask Cat to make a turn.”
In ordinary English, this means, “Ask Cat to pop round.”
For Sibiya, it meant, “Ask Cat to exist in a flexible state of possibility that does not imply communication, facilitation, coordination, intent, or physical reality.”
It was surreal, yes. But it was also terrifyingly disciplined. There was a method to this madness, even if the method was simple: confuse the universe until it surrenders.
And through it all, one must remember — this is not a ward councillor explaining away missing raffle tickets. This is the National Deputy Commissioner of Police. A man whose institution expects suspects to answer plainly.
Imagine asking a suspect, “Did you commit the offence?” In response, they say, “I wouldn’t characterise my interaction with the property as acquisitive in the official sense.”
Yet here we were, watching yes and no treated like hazardous materials that require protective gloves. Every straightforward question became a philosophical symposium. Every categorical denial came with a detachable footnote.
It would be hysterical if it were not so serious. And perhaps that is why it is hysterical. Because what else does one do when a deputy national commissioner of police has a problem with facts? You laugh. Not because it is funny in a light-hearted way, but because it is absurd in a way that tickles the survival instinct.
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* The writer, Themba Khumalo, is a renowned columnist, political commentator and former editor
