383 days, one video, no arrests

This story has significance for readers across Africa and beyond.

On a wine farm outside Stellenbosch, Independent Development Trust (IDT) CEO Tebogo Malaka and her sidekick, Phasha Makgolane, slid R60,000 in hush money in front of Pieter-Louis Myburgh, one of our investigative journalists.

After weeks of planning, documenting and setting up the sting, Pieter-Louis casually whipped out his phone to photograph the loot, then pushed the Dior bag back across the table before walking off. It is hard to think of a more watertight case of bribery documented in high-definition quality.

We published the footage 383 days ago. We count the days, because nobody else does.

Since then: no arrest, no court date, no publicly known tax consequence.

Call it the Dior docket.

Commercial crime prosecution is slow by design, and for good reason: the paper trail runs through banks and shelf companies and a state entityâs procurement files, every step contestable, every affidavit a future cross-examination. Prosecutors who enrol early lose in court, and a lost case is worse than a slow one because it hands the accused an acquittal to wave about for the rest of their life.

But crime and corruption are now so badly out of control.

Earlier this year, we ran a series on how fraud is exploding in South Africa, estimated to be around 5% of GDP and exceeding the FBIâs total reported internet crime losses for the whole of the US. And prosecutions remain criminally low in relation to reported cases.

The Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit is under-resourced and oversubscribed. The investigating officer carries an unenviable caseload. The few remaining heroes actually doing their jobs to fight and prosecute crime have watched what happens to anyone who strikes a match inside the belly of this gluttonous beast.

But none of that excuses this case.

The law is not complicated

Section 3 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act 12 of 2004 makes it a crime to offer any gratification to induce another person to act improperly, in breach of trust or in violation of a legal duty. Section 21 makes the attempt an offence in its own right. Section 26 lets a high court impose life imprisonment, plus a fine of up to five times the gratification involved. On R60,000, that is R300,000 and the rest of your natural life.

And very rarely is the crime caught on 4K video.

Malaka is also on the record, during our investigation into her property dealings, responding to questioning about how she came to pay for mulitmillion-rand properties in cash.

âI want it closed. I donât want you to be writing about it... but I also donât know how to make a proposal.â Asked whether IDT tenders could still be steered our way while she was suspended, she said: âIt can be.â

Malaka denied wrongdoing.

âI never bribed anyone. I never took out money and gave it to anyone, so I am not going to comment further on the allegations because it is a legal matter and I am willing to go to court to prove my innocence,â she told eNCA in August last year. We should oblige her.

Daily Maverick laid criminal charges two days after publishing the story. Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson had laid his own the day before that, at Cape Town Central police station, citing corruption, bribery, collusion and Public Finance Management Act breaches. The docket went to the SAPS Commercial Crime Investigation Unit, where it has stayed.

In January, Western Cape police spokesperson Captain Frederick van Wyk confirmed that âthe mentioned case is being investigated by the Commercial Crime Investigation [Unit]â. That is the entire public record of a year of policing: confirmation that a thing is being done.

The police referred the docket to the National Prosecuting Authorityâs Specialised Commercial Crime Unit in October. NPA Western Cape spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said the unit had screened it and ânoted that there were several important aspects of the investigation the police needed to attend toâ. By March, the line was: âThe matter is not trial ready and cannot be enrolled until the investigations requested are finalised.â A senior state advocate was appointed to prioritise finalising it, with feedback due on 15 March.

That was 161 days ago. Nothing has been reported since.

The NPA has had a permanent corruption unit, Idac, since August 2024. It exists for precisely this type of case.

The other SARS

The Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that money does not escape tax by being dirty. And R60,000 in cash comes from somewhere. Section 28 of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act obliges accountable institutions to report cash transactions above R49,999.99.

Our reporting set out how an IDT contractor helped bankroll a R16-million property, and others without mortgages, linked to Malaka.

Those are the glaring, shouting triggers of a lifestyle audit.

SARS has said nothing publicly.

Claim a home office and you will be asked for the floor plan, the lease, the municipal account and three years of bank statements. Miss a submission by a day, and the penalty is automatic, itemised and unarguable.

That machinery is fast, granular and relentless. Which is how we know that the stateâs failure to move on R60,000 in R200 notes, offered on camera by a named public executive to a named journalist, is not a capacity problem.

The Dior docket, meanwhile, sits somewhere warm and quiescent, being âinvestigatedâ.

The sum total of consequence

The state somehow becomes capable when it is aimed at ordinary folk. It was not incapable when it came for Marianne Thamm: evidence led at the Madlanga Commission pointed to SAPS Crime Intelligence in the robbery and break-in at the home of a journalist investigating Crime Intelligence corruption. Resources were found. Someone was briefed. Someone drove to Marianneâs house, broke in and stole her work devices.

Babita Deokaran was shot outside her home in Winchester Hills five years ago. She was the acting chief director of financial accounting at Gauteng Health, and she had flagged suspect Tembisa Hospital payments. Twelve days before she died, she warned her department that lives were in danger. Six men have been sentenced for killing her. Nobody has been convicted of ordering it.

In August 2012, the police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers at Marikana, some of them in the back and others while hiding from the police. The Farlam Commission called the dispersal decision reckless and found that SA Police Service leadership had concealed and fabricated evidence before it. On the 14th anniversary this year, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute called on the NPA to provide a detailed account of the current status of all outstanding Marikana prosecutions and provide a concrete timeline for prosecutorial action.

The Zondo Commission cost close to R1-billion by Justice Zondoâs own count, and put state spending tainted by capture at about R57-billion. Now ask a South African to name one senior figure serving a sentence for any of it.

A total of $580,000 in cash was taken from a sofa at the Presidentâs Phala Phala farm in February 2020. In May 2026, the Constitutional Court declared Parliamentâs 2022 decision to bury the section 89 panel report irrational and unconstitutional. Six years to start a process.

A sofa and a shopping bag. That is the ANC filing system.

Discoveryâs Pothole Patrol has filled more than 343,000 Johannesburg potholes since 2021. There are 637,000 active private security officers against an SAPS establishment of roughly 186,000, which is three-and-a-half guards for every police officer, paid for twice over by us.

In May 2026, the President removed Sisisi Tolashe as minister of social development, giving no reason. Our reporting had set out two undeclared Chinese SUVs she accepted in late 2023 and a state-paid employee stationed at her East London home.

In June, the portfolio went to Dina Pule, found guilty of misconduct by Parliamentâs ethics committee in 2013 for concealing a relationship with a businessman whose company took R6-million, and found by then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela to have acted unlawfully and unethically. In the current ANC world, loyalty outranks honesty.

Corruption scandals have not stopped since Jacob Zuma resigned as president. For a brief moment it looked like we might regenerate our way out of the State Capture years, but itâs clear we are still suffering under a compromised system of corruption and incompetence.

Unemployment remains near record highs â 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, or 8.5 million people. Broken cities cannot fix roads or deliver basic services and security. Major scandals get their own expensive, long-running commission that generates a transcript for the archive, and little more.

Malaka resigned at the end of January, days before her disciplinary hearing after months of suspension on full pay. Makgolane resigned too.

That is the sum total of consequence.

In the Malaka case, the State has had 383 days to do its job. And while this may seem like inaction, it is not. This is an active decision, retaken every day, to avoid justice and accountability for the politically connected.

If the message isnât clear, let us translate it for you: âTo every person trying to escape poverty, lawlessness and struggling from one month to the next: we do not give a fuck about you, or this country.â

Tomorrow, it will be 384 days. DM

Reporting originally appeared via Daily Maverick. Read the full source for additional context.