(Think James Earl Jones in Cry, the Beloved Country.)
We chatted over a desk in a school in the rolling hills of Zululand. Simphiwe is one of six children, four of whom became teachers. His dad was a school principal and his mother a teacher in Nquthu. Simphiwe was friendly but spoke formally with the bearing of an old-fashioned teacher. His words were precise.
The family was well known in Nquthu, where his brother Vusumuzi was speaker of the local municipality and deputy principal at Luvisi Primary School. When he was shot dead in June 2015, he was 46 years old.
Simphiwe offered me a photo of his beloved brother. They were two years apart and schooled together, and Vusumuzi was special, he chuckled. The photo showed a handsome man with kind eyes and a friendly smile. Growing up, he was a natural leader. Although quiet and stubborn, he was a charismatic character, his brother said. “He was loved for that smile. People just gravitated to him. But he wasn’t a loud sort, not one to respond quickly to things. He was a deep thinker with a serious side. I really respected him. He wouldn’t move with the wind and that’s the reason he was assassinated.”
Simphiwe and his brother were politically aware as schoolboys but only joined the ANC in the 1990s, after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. People were drawn to Vusumuzi. He was a born organiser. He was elected as an ANC councillor in the 2011 local government elections and served a five-year term. He was then re-elected in 2016 and offered the mayoralty of Nquthu, which he turned down as it was a full-time job and he wanted to remain a teacher.
He was appointed municipal speaker. But he didn’t embrace the role. “He was down to earth. He was loved by ordinary people. I told him to smarten up. I was amused when he got a suit. But he wasn’t one for long, pointed shoes. He was just that kind of person. He never expected any position.”
Simphiwe laughed while recalling an incident involving Vusumuzi scampering up a telephone pole to fasten an ANC poster. He was more in the mould of a mobiliser and community organiser than a politician. As speaker, he expressed his disdain for the antics of his peers. “He used to say, ‘Hey, I’m disappointed. These people are starting stuff I have no interest in.’ They believed it was time to eat. I think my brother was naive to think he was on the same page as them. They obviously felt threatened by his utterances over their shenanigans.”
Throughout the nine years that he was a councillor, Vusumuzi remained employed as a teacher and stayed in the same humble home which he shared with his wife and four children.
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Simphiwe said he had no detailed knowledge of why his brother was shot. An ANC insider, meanwhile, told me that Vusumuzi fell out with Lucky Moloi, who, although apparently born in Nquthu, was never raised there. Moloi is the husband of KZN agriculture and rural development MEC Bongi Sithole-Moloi. He is a smooth dude who gained notoriety as the result of his involvement in a building scandal in Pietermaritzburg that saw him convicted of corruption. Moloi, the secretary of the ANC’s Bhambatha region and a councillor at the time, accepted a sweetener of R200,000 to influence the Umgungundlovu district municipality to buy a building in Pietermaritzburg at an inflated price.
Before Lucky Moloi received a 36-month, jail-free correctional supervision sentence, he resurfaced in Nquthu. He wasn’t well known, but he played politics well and apparently became part of an alliance with Nquthu mayor Emily Molefe and the Reverend James Mthethwa, the former Umzinyathi district mayor. Mthethwa was later redeployed to Parliament as a national MP after it was alleged that the ANC spent R100,000 on legal fees for Thandeka Nukani in the Grishen Bujram case. Mthethwa had employed Nukani as his personal assistant after she lost her job as Dundee mayor.
Vusumuzi reportedly clashed with all three: Moloi, Mthethwa and Molefe.
This is a summary of the story of his brother’s murder that Simphiwe told a judicial commission. On the day of the killing, the hitman, Sibongiseni Mdakane, arrived at the primary school and asked to speak to Vusumuzi. Mdakane was a local from Nquthu who worked as a security guard. He entered the classroom, shook Vusumuzi’s hand and spoke to him about work. Vusumuzi gave Mdakane some telephone numbers. Mdakane then pretended to turn and leave. As Vusumuzi returned to the chalkboard, Mdakane pulled out a gun and opened fire, shooting Vusumuzi and two pupils by accident.
Mdakane was apparently an amateur. He was arrested the same day as the killing, and within two weeks was on trial for the murder. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to life imprisonment. In his plea, Mdakane said he was approached by Mbhekiseni Khambule, a local ANC heavy and the bodyguard of mayor Emily Molefe. Khambule asked Mdakane to carry out the hit for R15,000 and offered him a job at a local security firm, Ocean Dawn. Subsequent to Mdakane’s sentencing, Khambule was prosecuted and was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
Simphiwe said that Khambule came from nearby Isandlwana and worked as a security guard in Johannesburg. He gained local prominence when he joined an organisation called Isikebhe, a community group that sought to crack down on stock theft. The ANC worked with Isikebhe to rally local support and Khambule joined the ANC, to the dismay of local ANC members. According to Simphiwe, testifying before the Moerane Commission, Khambule became close to local ANC leaders and went from struggling to make ends meet by doing odd jobs to riding around in a Toyota Fortuner. ANC members complained that Khambule went about armed and intimidated people. Simphiwe said it was clear that Khambule was sent by someone “who was behind the scenes to organise the hitman”. In his view, his brother was being sidelined in the ANC ahead of his murder because of clashes he had with Khambule. “Vusumuzi believed that Khambule had been sent by others to target him.”
At the time in the Nquthu municipality, there was a coalition between the ANC and the National Freedom Party aimed at wresting control from the IFP. Vusumuzi told his brother that his comrades suspected him of wanting to vote against the ANC, something he would never have done. But he railed against the ANC for decisions it took that supported local corruption.
Simphiwe said Vusumuzi had told him as far back as 2011 that he was under pressure by ANC colleagues, especially Mayor Emily Molefe, to approve a contract with a certain security company without following proper tendering procedures. His objection to this saw him isolated within the ANC. He was called to a meeting where he was told that if he didn’t resign, he would be dead.
Simphiwe urged his brother to report the matter to the police and to hire bodyguards, but Vusumuzi didn’t trust the police to help. He also “did not trust the security company that was contracted by the municipality”. This company, called Ocean Dawn, had employed Khambule before he became the mayor’s bodyguard.
In Khambule’s trial, a state witness testified that before the actual assassination, there were two previous attempts to kill Vusumuzi. He said to the court that “Khambule had told him that if he failed to get the hitmen, he [Khambule] would be in trouble as the mayor had threatened to poison him,” reported Simphiwe to the Moerane Commission. He also wanted to know who had paid Khambule’s legal fees because he could not afford them. In court, Khambule was represented by a big-city lawyer reputedly known for defending taxi owners. In the end he was found guilty and as of late 2019 he was in Kokstad maximum security prison serving a life sentence.
The Ntombela family, Simphiwe said, believed the masterminds behind their brother’s killing were still walking free. Why didn’t the police investigate further? The evidence was available and the suspects had in fact been caught red-handed. Did the police follow up on the security tender? Simphiwe said the authorities did not take his brother’s murder seriously. “It was just left hanging. Where are the Hawks? If they are serious, they would find out who ordered the hit.”
He said there was “complete fear” after his brother’s murder. “Some people said we can’t question this. If we do, we will die. People wouldn’t even talk to my family in public.”
Vusumuzi’s funeral was hijacked by the ANC. The memory of this still rankles Simphiwe and his family. “I was searched at my own brother’s funeral. There was this MP who wasn’t known to the family who stood at the door with his bullies and stopped people from coming into the hall. They were like his dogs and he was commanding them. They were from the same security company, Ocean Dawn. They gave a gun salute. What is that?”