War Party. Greg Ardé

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СКАЧАТЬ occurred where patrons sat at tables outside the Ikasi tavern.

      Inside the tavern the next day, cops watched CCTV footage in which one of the killers was recognised. Later that day there was a disagreement among police as to who would carry the docket. It is a complicated story – let’s just say it was an early indication that the investigation would be highly contested.

      * * *

      Soon after the investigation started, cops were told that one of their colleagues had taken a R100,000 bribe from a local ANC heavy. This created divisions in the investigative team and fuelled rumours of cops on the take.

      When CCTV footage of the shooting was shared among the cops, an informant identified one of the men at the scene as “Cebo Buthelezi, one of Sputla’s guys”. More about Sputla later, but for the sake of this chapter, he’s a big taxi boss in northern KZN with a history so menacing that he deserves a book of his own. The informant said Cebo Buthelezi, Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Xulu were the killers and they were hiding out in Johannesburg.

      After this information was relayed to the cops, they apparently dithered. As a result the informer got restless and told ANC comrades in Newcastle, who called then police minister Nathi Nhleko, who in turn dispatched a team of cops to Johannesburg to pounce on the suspects. There they established that men from Newcastle had arrived in a stolen Audi, the same vehicle that had been used as a getaway car in the July 2016 murder of Newcastle ANC councillor candidate Thembi Mbongwa. She was shot dead in front of her husband and children at their home in Osizweni ahead of the local government elections and two months before Wandile Ngubeni was murdered at the tavern.

      In Johannesburg, cops found Sbu Sibiya in a back room in a shack settlement near Germiston. Sibiya ratted on Cebo Xulu, Sputla’s nephew, and also turned on Cebo Buthelezi, who was tracked down. Police took Cebo Buthelezi and Sbu Sibiya back to Madadeni, where they apparently said they had been hired by Dr Mahlaba to harass ANC members and disrupt local ANC branch meetings.

      The suspects agreed to make a confession, but before they could two lawyers inexplicably arrived, apparently demanding to speak to them before they were questioned. The cops refused. Shortly afterwards the inter-ministerial task team reporting to Bheki Cele was set up and took over the docket. A few months later cops heard a hit had been put out on one of the key investigators.

      In the meantime, two men, Bongi Mazibuko and Reginald “Jomo” Nkosi, entered the Newcastle murder story. They came forward with information on Wandile Ngubeni’s murder, hoping to cash in on the R100,000 reward which the ANC was offering. Apparently, Mazibuko and Nkosi had taken Cebo Buthelezi and Sbu Sibiya to the tavern. The two were keen to give statements to the police but Mayor Mahlaba allegedly dispatched his lawyers to speak to them, though not before the two gave witness statements of their own volition.

      * * *

      In March 2019 the ANC Youth League in Newcastle released an extraordinary statement on Facebook welcoming developments in the cases of Wandile Ngubeni and Thembi Mbongwa.

      The statement opened with a biblical quote from Luke 8:17: “For there is nothing that is hidden that will not be disclosed and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”

      The statement also roasted the thugs masquerading as leaders who ruled with guns. The shootings of Thembi Mbongwa and Wandile Ngubeni, it said, were both coordinated by “one heartless bloodthirsty mastermind”. The same alleged hitman, Sbu Sibiya, had killed both and the ANCYL called on “Dr Ntuthuko Mahlaba to come clean in all these shenanigans”.

      To refresh everyone’s memory, the ANCYL recounted the fact that Mahlaba laid charges of police corruption in 2016 when Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Buthelezi were arrested and did the same in January 2019 when Jomo Nkosi and Bongi Mazibuko were brought in for questioning.

      In 2016, during the nomination process for ANC local government ward candidates, the ANCYL said there was violence at ANC branch meetings, including two incidents involving Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Buthelezi, who arrived there with Mahlaba.

      The ANCYL said its member Arthur Zwane held meetings with Nkosi and Mazibuko and “in these meetings, Jomo and Bongi informed Comrade Arthur about the details of the killing of Wandile Ngubeni. They were explicit that Dr Mahlaba was behind the planning of the killing of Cde Mafika Mndebele.” Mahlaba hotly denied involvement in the conspiracy.

      * * *

      When charges were withdrawn against Mahlaba in the Ngubeni case, a report in The Citizen quoted prosecutor Israel Zuma, who said, “There is no reasonable court that will accept the version of a single witness not corroborated by any other evidence to prove the guilt of the accused,” and surmised that the only logical course of action was for the state to decline to prosecute. The Citizen report added that when the case was enrolled, the state had consulted with six witnesses who, at that stage, were prepared to testify.

      “During the course of the investigation, however, one of the state’s witnesses, Martin Sithole, was gunned down … Of the five remaining witnesses, two made statements via their attorneys, alleging that they were forced to implicate the accused and were no longer willing to testify for the state. Two others laid charges with the SAPS, saying that they were forced by the police to make statements implicating Dr Mahlaba.” Based on these facts, the prosecutor said, it was extremely likely that, if the matter went to trial, the chances of succeeding were minimal.

      I later established that one of the witnesses in the case against Mahlaba was employed by the municipality, in the mayor’s office.

      Mahlaba’s claim that the malfeasance in Newcastle predates him was contradicted by other regional ANC leaders. Most Newcastle comrades, however, seem equally tainted and to have benefited from a range of multi-million-rand contracts either not completed or shoddily finished, including a swimming pool and two community halls.

      An ANC source in Newcastle said that the real power there (until Mahlaba wrested it back in 2019) lay with Arthur Zwane, who enjoyed the support at times of fellow ANCYL regional heavyweight Senzo Khumalo. Mahlaba, who hailed from Nquthu, was a relative newcomer to Newcastle, having arrived to do his hospital in-service training there. It seems Zwane, Khumalo, Rehman and Mahlaba weren’t ideologically opposed. Many decisions relating to municipal contracts seem to have been taken on the basis of local patronage networks and ties. It is in the competition for first place at the feeding trough that the falling-out among comrades begins.

       Chapter 5

      A boondoggle if ever there was

      The horror of political assassination in KwaZulu-Natal, beyond what it foretells for the country as a whole, is that people have become inured to the violence. The bloody brutality, the cruelty and the human loss have largely become masked in the public eye. It is the new normal.

      Beyond some graphic media reports, people who aren’t directly affected by the violence appear numbed. “That’s politics for you,” they will say with a shrug. Sometimes arrests are made and there’s much fanfare as politicians flock to the limelight in condemnation of the killing or to crusade around the innocence of one or other comrade.

      This all played out in Umzimkhulu, a nondescript town typical of many inland of the sea between Durban and East London. There’s not much to it but a collection of drab buildings. The town is divided for the most part into two parallel roads which are fronted by cheek-by-jowl trading stores. The roads merge near a collection of buildings that appear distinct СКАЧАТЬ