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Joining the party

KZN is a province awash with violence. It is no longer the violence of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the ANC and IFP fought a bitter battle for supremacy in the province. That contest has been decided, and the ANC has come out on top. Now the murderous battles take place within the party, in the fight for office and material benefits. This transition from one form of violence to another can be summed up in the story of strongman Sifiso Nkabinde and his family, and the local politics of Richmond, where he once bestrode the stage.

* * *

It was a surprise to see Sinqobile “Vic” Nkabinde sporting a big flashy watch. It looked like a saucer strapped to his wrist. The face of the watch was an ANC flag that beamed up at us. I suppressed an inward shudder. After all, ANC comrades had killed Vic’s father, Sifiso.

The sharp young man in designer jeans sitting in his mom’s house in Magoda, Richmond, was only 10 when his strongman father was slain. Months before his murder Sifiso Nkabinde told me and other reporters that there was a bullet with his name on it. This revelation was more a matter of common sense than prescience. The self-declared ANC warlord lived by the sword and he knew he would die by it. But I doubt even he could have anticipated quite how bloody his demise would be.

On 23 January 2019, twenty years to the day that Sifiso had been killed, I nosed my car west and joined hard-body bakkies and livestock lorries on the road to meet his son. It is a slow, winding journey to Richmond. The road rises gently upwards from Durban, and you can get to Richmond in an hour and a bit. It takes half that time travelling south from Pietermaritzburg. Either way, you can savour the journey. The countryside is heart-achingly beautiful. The R56 intersects sugar cane fields and the darker-hued greens of commercial forests. The islands of indigenous bush are teeming with wild birds.

In summer, temperatures easily reach 31 degrees and the only reprieve from the heat is when fat cotton-wool cumulonimbus clouds burst open in afternoon thundershowers. After the brief rains, white and yellow cosmos flowers seem to spring up magically on the roadside.

Richmond is down the drag from Ixopo, where Alan Paton famously wrote in Cry, the Beloved Country of how the hills “are lovely beyond any singing of it”. The town of Richmond is all that, too. There are quaint vestiges of the colonial era in the red-brick houses clustered around the main street. Nowadays they compete with a growing number of hardware stores, taverns, funeral parlours and a spiffy new KFC opposite the courthouse and police station. A few kilometres from the town are the townships of Ndaleni and Magoda, lush with neatly fenced vegetable gardens. Richmond’s beauty is often rightly juxtaposed with its history of bloody conflict.

Sifiso Nkabinde’s son Vic sits upright on the couch opposite his mom, Nonhlanhla, in their living room. He is an earnest young man on a mission. If you had visited them twenty years ago, it would have been impossible without an armed escort. But in 2019 it was a doddle. I simply drove down the township road and stopped at one of the many roadside taverns for friendly reassurance that I was on the right route. The ease of moving about in the town is an indication of how violence has evolved and transmuted in KZN.

Sifiso was shot dead in Richmond village early one January morning in 1999. The murder largely brought to an end the carnage that erupted after he was outed by his ANC comrades as a “police spy”. “That was nonsense. Nobody produced any evidence of that,” his widow, Nonhlanhla, said to me. While researching this book, I spoke to two highly placed cops who were adamant that Sifiso had worked with the apartheid police, but no evidence has ever emerged publicly. Whatever the truth of the matter, Sifiso’s story is instructive for a number of reasons, not least because it was an early indicator of how things would get done in KZN, a template for the broader violence that would take hold in the province.

Sifiso’s potted biography goes something like this. He was born in 1961 and became a school teacher in 1989. Then he underwent a giddy rise to the position of provincial deputy secretary of the ANC in 1991 as a protégé of the firebrand Harry Gwala, the “Lion of the Midlands”. By 1994, when Sifiso was elected to the KZN legislature, his gangs of Self-Defence Units (SDUs) ruled Richmond through fear.

Three years later Nkabinde spectacularly cut ties with the ANC when they accused him of being an apartheid-era police spy. His supporters said his rising star threatened a number of ANC members, including Jacob Zuma. After Sifiso left the ANC, he joined Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement (UDM). Thereupon he called a meeting of ANC Richmond councillors and, according to his former friend and Richmond mayor Andrew Ragavaloo, a bellicose Sifiso demanded that the entire town council follow him to the UDM. Ragavaloo and his brother-in-law Rodney van der Byl were the only two of the nine ANC councillors who refused to follow their old comrade’s fiery edict. A few days later gunmen pumped 18 bullets into Van der Byl outside his home.

In the ensuing two years a savage war broke out in Richmond, and massacres claimed about 120 lives, including those of four ANC councillors. President Nelson Mandela visited the town repeatedly, decrying the violent scourge but in vain. At the time, I visited Richmond almost every week to file stories for the Daily News and later for the Sunday Tribune. I interviewed the local undertaker back then. His business was booming because, as one resident told me, “Satan is dancing in the streets”. He was referring to Nkabinde.

* * *

At one stage South Africa’s most wanted man was Nkabinde’s lieutenant, a Self-Defence Unit commander, Bob Ndlovu, whose evasive powers became legendary. He survived an astonishing 73 attempts to arrest him. In September 1997 Nkabinde himself was arrested and tried for 16 murders. Three days later Ndlovu was also caught and charged with 14 counts of murder. He was convicted and served 12 years before he was released.

In May 1998 Nkabinde was acquitted of the charges. Seven months later he was dead, aged 38. Gunmen fired 80 rounds into him in the Spar parking lot in the centre of Richmond. In a revenge attack shortly afterwards, 12 members of the ANC-supporting Ndabezitha family were murdered at their home outside the village. That’s mostly ancient history now.

Vic Nkabinde has his mother’s and father’s names tattooed on his left arm. He is a happening young man with a cool haircut and goatee who wears trendy gear. He spent a year in the US working in hospitality. “I have no grudge and no hate,” he tells me. “It has been a long road. As a kid I never understood anything. I just made assumptions about what happened. For a time I did hold a grudge, but the past is the past and we need to move forward. My father’s killers have become my friends.”

This is true. Vic is close to one of the two killers who unleashed a volley of shots into his father’s car. Nine men were arrested for his father’s murder and a number of them were sent to jail, including the men who carried out the shooting, SANDF soldier Sandile Dlamini and former soldier Lincoln Mbikwane. Others tried in connection with the murder included three of significance: Ragavaloo’s bodyguard Siphiwe Shabane, ANC Richmond councillor Joel Mkhize and local policeman Sergeant Anil Jelal.

For the sake of brevity, here is a summary of the assassination gleaned from the indictment, as reported in an IOL story. Simphiwe Dlamini, Nkabinde’s bodyguard, was with him at the time of his murder. Automatic weapons stolen from the police were used in the incident.

On the morning of the killing, the assassins took up position in the centre of Richmond while Joel Mkhize monitored Nkabinde’s movements and alerted them when Sifiso drove into town. Four men in a stolen car drove past Nkabinde’s parked car outside the supermarket. When he emerged from the shop and got into his car, the four pulled up alongside the vehicle and stopped. Mbikwane and Dlamini, wearing balaclavas and surgical gloves, climbed out of their car and let rip with their guns and then fled. Nkabinde was rushed to hospital in Pietermaritzburg but died after failed attempts to resuscitate him.

After the shooting the assassins rendezvoused at the Richmond cemetery, where they and their accomplices met the policeman Anil Jelal, who had been assigned to protect Ragavaloo. Jelal took their guns.

* * *

Years later the ANC’s Willies Mchunu, who was premier of KZN from 2016 to 2019, facilitated peace talks in prison as a result of which the Nkabinde family reconciled with Sifiso’s killers.

Vic said the encounters were a turning point for him. “I met the guys and spoke to them. I cried a lot of tears. With God’s grace, I was freed. It took a lot of courage to get here. It felt like I was in prison, like a prisoner in my own life.

“Sandile [Dlamini] calls me every month. When I met him, we clicked. When I meet him or the others now, we greet and shake hands.”

There’s no disputing, Vic said, that his father helped shape the ANC in KZN. But he was also killed by his comrades. Vic attempted to rationalise it like this twenty years later: “In every family there are problems. He had problems with his brothers, but not the ANC. The ANC was his home and that is why we decided to go back. We felt like we fit. There is no UDM in Magoda.”

A few years ago Vic and his mom led the UDM in Magoda back into the ANC fold. It was a strategic move, Nonhlanhla says. She was a UDM member of Parliament in Cape Town for seven years from 2004. “But there’s nothing the UDM can offer in Richmond anymore.

“The family switched back to the ANC. I couldn’t carry a grudge anymore. I didn’t want hate in my heart. I didn’t want to fear them. I see Sifiso’s killers in town now. They say ‘hello ma’ and I greet them.” She shrugged.

When Sifiso’s killers were sentenced to jail, she emerged from court and told reporters that she hoped the “puppet masters behind my husband’s death” would be revealed. “Hopefully, some big names will be mentioned,” she was quoted as saying. Two decades later she appeared to be resigned to life back in the ANC. Things just didn’t work without the ANC and Magoda’s residents were excluded because of their association with the UDM, she said.

The Nkabindes’ return to the ANC brought peace and stability in the town. “We don’t ever want to go back to the past,” Vic said. “We want one voice, one community and to open the doors of infrastructure. The community of Magoda has always seen our family as leaders. They would have been spurned and branded if we stayed UDM.”

So how did their UDM comrades feel?

Vic smiled. “Some didn’t approve, but they’ve also jumped ship.” Work is scarce in the area and people can’t afford to be excluded from opportunities. Back in the ANC, Sifiso’s family and friends can survive and his soul can rest in peace, his son said. “Now we are back in the ANC, they acknowledge his contribution. I would like to believe there could be a statue to him in Richmond one day. There was never any concrete proof of the spy allegations.

“I would like to believe his spirit resides in his home. He was loved by many. Everyday people say they miss him.”

* * *

Justice Vuka Tshabalala presided in the case against Sifiso’s killers. He said they showed no remorse. Press reports of the trial said they appeared passive. Only Lincoln Mbikwane stunned the crowd in court “by dancing from side to side and laughing after the judge told him he would be spending the rest of his life in prison”, according to an IOL report.

The same report quoted Bheki Cele, now South Africa’s police minister and then the ANC’s spokesman for safety and security in KZN. He said that the ANC didn’t kill Sifiso. “We were not responsible for Sifiso’s death. Those responsible could have been members of the party but they acted as individuals. The provincial office of the ANC refused to pay the legal costs of those involved despite requests from the lower structures,” Cele said.

I spoke to a source close to the men involved in the murder, and he sniggered at Cele’s comment. The order came from ANC top brass and they all knew it, he said, but nobody would break ranks, except perhaps one of them who is now a bank robber and will probably end up dead sooner or later.

In March 2008 ANC heavyweight Zweli Mkhize, formerly a member of the KZN executive and then its premier, and currently a national cabinet minister, won a R150,000 damages claim against the newspaper City Press because an article incorrectly created the impression that he had put a R200,000 bounty on Nkabinde’s head. This was mentioned in the Nkabinde trial by a man who had turned state witness, though in cross-examination he admitted it was hearsay, told to him by Joel Mkhize or others involved in the murder.

Those involved in the Sifiso murder whom I could trace include Siphiwe Shabane, who is now employed by the Harry Gwala district municipality in Ixopo as a deputy director for community safety. Joel Mkhize now works for the Richmond municipality. Sandile Dlamini reportedly hustles for government tenders in between acting as a bodyguard at the ANC provincial office in KZN. Anil Jelal works for the Umgungundlovu municipality. Thulasizwe Dennis Mbanjwa, who served time for his role in driving the killers out of town after the Nkabinde murder, was subsequently arrested in 2013 after a “blue light” shooting on the N3. While acting as a bodyguard for the Umgungundlovu district mayor, he fired shots at a Durban motorist who didn’t get out of the way of the mayoral car.

The men who served time for the Nkabinde murder were told that if they shut up, they would be looked after, and they were. Not all of them expected a reward for the hit, although it was mentioned. According to a source close to the killers, they felt they had little choice but to kill Nkabinde: he was causing “havoc” in Richmond. At the trial Judge Tshabalala said there was no doubt that Nkabinde’s murder was political in motivation, but he didn’t probe who ordered it.

In prison the killers were given separate cells and were regularly visited by senior ANC personnel. On their release they were offered government jobs.

Sifiso’s former warlord Bob Ndlovu served his time and was released in 2016 and now works for the municipality under Andrew Ragavaloo’s son Dwayne, who is the traffic chief. Bob Ndlovu’s brother Dumisani “Sash” appeared in a story in The Witness in 2018, which reported how he led Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veterans in a protest that brought Richmond to a standstill. The vets were demanding jobs, tenders and government houses. The newspaper said a group of ex-combatants, wearing signature camouflage uniforms, sang and danced to struggle songs and demanded to meet the mayor. Sash is employed by the municipality.

* * *

In 2017 Richmond was once again rocked by three politically motivated murders.

In March of that year Richmond municipal manager Sibusiso Sithole was shot dead in Victoria Street in town. It was just before 9 am and he’d been called to a meeting and was pulled off the roadside by killers who posed as policemen. Sithole was due to take up a job at the Umngeni municipality. Four men were arrested for the murder and are awaiting trial.

Four months earlier, on 18 November 2016, Sithole signed an affidavit at the offices of a Pietermaritzburg lawyer alleging that he had been approached by businessman Walter Muwandi. Richmond was in the process of acquiring a financial management system and the municipality had identified seven service providers. Richmond’s chief financial officer Sanjay Mewalall and financial manager Halima Osman had narrowed the list down to three companies: Camelsa, Munsoft and Vesta. Munsoft met the town’s criteria and was the least expensive.

On 5 November 2016 Sithole says he was approached by Camelsa owner Muwandi, who said that Mewalall had offered to appoint his company if he paid something to facilitate the deal. Muwandi said he had paid R120,000 as directed into the account of MKT Services, an electrical contracting company that did work for Richmond and that was owned by businessman Sindhu Bhogal. Sithole asked that the matter be investigated.

A few months later he was dead. At the time he was reportedly being protected by the Ndlovu brothers Sash and Bob, who are known buddies of the ANC’s local strongmen in council. In 2019 it was an open secret in Richmond that R30 million worth of timber grown on municipal land had been stolen and the same ANC councillors had turned a blind eye in return for a slice of the proceeds.

A month after Sithole’s murder, deputy mayor Thandazile Phoswa was shot in what was later described as a curious suicide.

Two months later ANC ward councillor Sifiso Mkhize was shot 18 times while driving home to Ndaleni on the evening of 29 June.

Journalist Christopher Clark wrote a feature article for the online agency GroundUp delving into these Richmond killings. He interviewed, among others in Richmond, Phoswa’s uncle Ulwazo and established that in 1997 Thandazile Phoswa’s parents and two of her siblings were shot dead in front of her in their home during the Nkabinde–ANC conflict. Twenty years later she was found shot dead in her home. Witnesses said her boyfriend of three months, bodyguard Samukelo Chili, was at the scene. He was arrested but he claimed Phoswa used his gun to shoot herself. The claim was trashed by her uncle Ulwazo, who told the reporter she was ambitious and was not one to have killed herself.

Murder charges against Chili were dropped due to insufficient evidence. Instead he was charged with contravention of the Firearms Act for failure to lock his gun in a safe.

* * *

Richmond’s ultimate survivor is the town’s first democratically elected mayor, Andrew Ragavaloo. Some see him as a warm, genial sort. Others say he’s canny. A teacher turned politician, he was elected mayor in 1996 and served till 2000. Thereafter he was speaker of the council for 11 years and then mayor again for five years until he retired in August 2016. Ragavaloo has written a book about Richmond’s violence.

It is remarkable that Ragavaloo has escaped the murder and mayhem of Richmond unscathed. The years have taken their toll, though. Ragavaloo is stumped by the 2017 killings. He told me that Sibusiso Sithole was a nice guy and that Phoswa’s suicide was decidedly odd. “She was left-handed and had a bullet hole in her right temple.”

Sifiso Mkhize had been Ragavaloo’s bodyguard for five years. The latter said Mkhize’s body was so shot up that when the police hauled him out of his car his torso separated from his waist and legs.

* * *

The skulduggery in Richmond is similar to that bedevilling many other municipalities in South Africa.

Here’s a brief summary of the case involving Richmond’s chief financial officer Sanjay Mewalall, who was fingered by Sibusiso Sithole before his death. Mewalall was suspended in 2018 and accused of accepting kickbacks. In December 2018 the Asset Forfeiture Unit swooped on Mewalall’s house and seized the family’s 16 vehicles. He is one of six accused facing a raft of corruption charges. His wife Leanne and her company Thistle Group are also said to be complicit in his schemes. The Mewalalls have appeared, along with MKT’s Sindhu Bhogal, in the Durban Specialised Commercial Crime Court.

An ANC source in Richmond says that Mewalall fell out with the municipal manager who replaced Sibusiso Sithole, a woman named Bongiwe Mnikathi, whose tenure in Richmond was troubled, to say the least. She was appointed in spite of concerns expressed by comrades about her patchy track record as a municipal manager in Vryheid. She left that municipality under a cloud to take up the job in Richmond soon after Sithole was murdered. She was hired, the ANC source said, on orders from above. She was said to be close to Jacob Zuma’s ally, former ANC KZN secretary-general Super Zuma. “We were instructed to appoint her,” the ANC member said.

Barely a year into her tenure, she was suspended for allegedly using the council credit card to buy R200,000 worth of goods from the wholesaler Makro, a purchase that included R20,000 spent on liquor. She took the suspension to court and won, but in October 2018 she was granted special leave because she did not feel safe at work. She allegedly received a death threat via a text message. One ANC member said the council wilfully botched Mnikathi’s fraud case by attempting to fire her.

Questions were raised in the national Parliament about the claims raised in Sibusiso Sithole’s affidavit concerning the financial systems contract for the town. The minister of cooperative governance was asked whether Munsoft and Camelsa were being investigated as a result of Sithole’s claims and how much they earned from the state. The municipality wouldn’t say whether due process was followed in the appointments of former convicts Bob and Sash Ndlovu and Joel Mkhize or what the status of the disciplinary cases against Mewalall and Mnikathi was.

* * *

I engaged with Vic Nkabinde a number of times. He’s a sincere young man, a product of his background, immersed in politics and, because of who he is, is well acquainted with the past.

He is the deputy chair of the Richmond youth council and organises an annual street store where he hires out a venue and invites destitute families to ‘shop’ with tokens for quality second-hand clothes he has collected. It’s a small gesture aimed at helping the poor, who, by “shopping”, don’t feel that they are receiving handouts.

Vic seems pragmatic. Most of his income is derived from supplying government schools with stationery. He’s not a big player and is not in the least flashy. He seems to work hard. Forgiveness, he said, came from his “heart and head”. Richmond is a small town and his father was central to the ANC, so he feels he belongs. But the ANC controls the council and is a source of employment, patronage and favours, and you would be foolish to alienate yourself from the party.

In 2019 Nhlanhla Ndabezitha, whose family was slaughtered in the Sifiso Nkabinde revenge attack, posted a message on Facebook deploring the ANC. The party gave killers jobs in Richmond, he said, while his family was struggling. The Ndabezithas, it seems, weren’t part of the club.

Richmond shows the connections between power, influence and business. The story I have told here, and others in this book, point to the existence of both an underworld and an overworld in South Africa. The two are enmeshed. The underworld threatens to rear larger than the overworld, and the criminal economy is bigger than we know. Under public pressure, the ANC makes all the right noises about dealing with corruption, but in reality things are pretty nicely stitched up for party insiders and the well-connected.

The unwritten contract around the killing of Sifiso Nkabinde meant that his killers were protected and reinserted in the system. It’s not clear whether the 2017 killings in Richmond are similar in kind to his murder, but these cases stink to high heaven.