Gayton McKenzie's alleged ties to the drug trade: Questions raised at Parliament's Ad Hoc committee

Questions have been raised before Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee investigating allegations made by SAPS KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, about what Minister Gayton McKenzie knows about drug dealing and drug trades.

This emerged on Wednesday when uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s (MK Party) David Skosana used his time when questioning Mkhwanazi further about the allegations made in a letter he received from an incarcerated individual, Jermaine Prim.

Prim’s letter was briefly alluded to during the committee housekeeping meeting on Monday when the suggestion came up to have him appear before the committee. 

The committee ultimately decided that, due to oral hearings concluding on Wednesday, it was too late to have either him or Thabo Bester appear.

Prim’s letter, which has yet to be published in its entirety, touches on conversations he allegedly had with tendepreneur Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala. Prim claims he shared a prison cell with Matlala at Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Facility, and he detailed the details of their conversations in this letter.

Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee heard on Wednesday during Mkhwanazi’s testimony that he came into possession of the letter via the MK Party. 

Mkhwanazi confirmed that it was addressed to MK Party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela, and it came to him after Mkhwanazi’s cousin received it from Ndhlela’s father.

Mkhwanazi acknowledged that the letter constituted hearsay evidence, but in his testimony on Thursday, he stated that there were too many claims in it, which he knew to be true, that had not been included elsewhere, such as a private meeting that Mkhwanazi had with Matlala.

When Skosana began his questioning, he asked Mkhwanazi, “How did you get this message? It is a message from one prisoner called Jermaine Prim”. 

“A cousin of mine that brought it to me,” Mkhwanazi said. “...I read a statement, and the majority of the things that came out of this statement, they corroborate the things that have already been presented before this committee and in the Madlanga Commission.”

Skosana asked: “If so, that does mean that when he says, in paragraph 7, that Honourable Gayton McKenzie made sure that he [Prim] is put in C-Max, because he has a voice recording, which links Honourable Gayton with drug dealers, and drug money?”

Mkhwanazi replied: “My reading and understanding of this, if I may. Almost all the paragraphs are narrating the stories of what he was told by Matlala, but in paragraph seven only, he is then expressing his own frustration.

“So the people he talks about in this paragraph (seven) are him telling ‘Cat’ Matlala. That's when the minister's name and other names are coming in. But the rest of this statement is what Matlala told him,” Mkhwanazi said.

“What is relevant to me in the main is, was the statement that the Minister (Senzo Mchunu) brought here, that came from prison, how it was obtained. That was the main thing.”

Mkhwanazi was referring to the claim that Mchunu’s lawyers met with Matlala in prison. This emerged while evidence leader Norman Arendse was reading portions of the letter aloud on Wednesday.

“He [Matlala] then told me that they are Senzo Mchunu’s lawyers, and that they asked him to sign a statement saying that he doesn’t know Mchunu. When Vusi Matlala arrived in C-Max in July 2025, he told me that he funded Senzo Mchunu’s election campaign, as Mchunu was campaigning to be the president of South Africa,” the letter reads.

Mkhwanazi had explained to Skosana that he found majority of the things that are written within the letter to be “worrying” and that “they need to be looked at”.

“Some of the things that he mentions there are things that have happened. Like, the meeting at Umhlanga, between him [Matlala] and me, he is the one who was telling this guy [Prim].

“This guy would not have known about that meeting. Surely, I had no reason not to trust most of the things that he said,” Mkhwanazi said.

“When this whole commission was announced, both Madlanga and the Ad Hoc Committee, Minister McKenzie, were among the vocal ones who said he's going to testify about the things he knows.

“Which made me believe that he knows things that perhaps might also assist in things that we are raising, which is drug-related,” Mkhwanazi said. “When his name comes like this, and he has not testified, it might perhaps leave a question mark as to what does he know that could assist with what we are talking about?

“When this man mentions his name here, perhaps it might be a different investigation altogether that might need to be investigated.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za