It took former hired killers to catch the hired killers of Zahida Sabadia, reports Stefaans Brummer
A week after student doctor Zahida Sabadia disappeared, half a rugby team’s worth of heavies in four cars and a van with Telkom markings, hung around the mansion in Ruslouw where the mother-of-three had lived with her husband, psychiatrist Dr Omar Sabadia.
If the sudden activity of the white men was somewhat incongruous in Ruslouw, a quiet neighbourhood of plots which border the Indian suburb of Laudium, it was lost on Omar Sabadia (44), who was heavily sedated for days after the February 11 “hijacking” in which his wife went missing, and in which he claimed to have received stab wounds.
Two weeks later, late last Sunday, Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad head superintendent Charlie Landman, armed with information, confronted the psychiatrist at his home, brought him to confess his alleged role in the murder of his wife, and had him point out where her decomposed body was tied to a tree in a lonely veld in Garankuwa, north of Pretoria.
The grisly find, early on Monday, was not far from the Bimbo’s fast-food outlet where the “hijacking” took place. It was also not far from Medunsa, through which Zahida Sabadia (30) had been studying to be a doctor.
The arrest of Omar Sabadia brought sorrow as well as answers to the tightly knit Indian community to which the Sabadias belonged, and to that of Louis Trichardt, where Zahida’s father, former Northern Province African National Congress legislator Omar Ahmed, is a leading figure.
The arrest also concluded an unusual collaboration between a mob of private investigators (including convicted murderer Jack la Grange and former hit-squad member “Slang” van Zyl) and detectives from North West Province, Pretoria and Johannesburg, who had worked on the case.
From the outset, some members of the family suspected Sabadia, but had little proof. A relative, who asked not to be named, said he was called in the early hours of February 15 with news that Sabadia was in Garankuwa Hospital, “bleeding profusely” after a hijacking. Accompanied by a relative, who is also a doctor, they visited him in hospital, only to find the extent of his wounds had been greatly exaggerated.
Relatives knew that Sabadia was in trouble because of a heavy gambling habit; that his wife, unhappily married, had threatened to end the relationship; that Sabadia had wanted to leave the country, but that she had been unwilling to accompany him; and that Sabadia was under investigation by Polmed, the police medical aid, for alleged fraud. Polmed stopped paying Sabadia last year when they suspected he was submitting false claims.
When, days after the disappearance, the family learned that Sabadia had taken out a R2,9-million insurance policy on his wife last September, their suspicions were reinforced.
Said the relative: “We knew from the first day that this man was involved, but we were not getting assistance from the authorities.”
Enter Johannesburg private investigator Andy Grudko, approached through a lawyer close to the family. His brief: to duplicate the police investigation to ensure nothing was overlooked, but also to put Sabadia under surveillance. When his agents arrived in Ruslouw that first Sunday, they saw three other cars — with what appeared to be false number plates — and a van apparently falsely marked as from Telkom, all showing a similar interest in the house of Sabadia.
“All these Europeans sitting around” Sabadia’s house was too “obvious” for Grudko, who found that his competitor was former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) operative “Slang” van Zyl, now a private investigator. Grudko learnt that the family had contracted Van Zyl and his partner Jack la Grange, a former head of Brixton Murder and Robbery who served time for killing two drug dealers, and withdrew from surveillance.
Van Zyl said his and his partner’s strategy had been to “infiltrate” Sabadia while they kept him “under 24-hour observation. Omar [Sabadia] met Jack before the arrest, and he believed until after the arrest that Jack was actually working for him.”
Van Zyl said the breakthrough had come when Sabadia, believing La Grange was on his side, had made “certain assertions”. These — he would not say what they were – — came on top of circumstantial evidence: the insurance policy and the Polmed investigation; testimony that the “hijackers” had been at Bimbo’s before the abduction asking whether the Sabadias had been there already; and evidence that Zahida had been unwilling to go to Bimbo’s but that her husband had forced her.
Last Sunday night, the private investigators briefed Landman, who accompanied them to Sabadia’s house and extracted a confession. This led them not only to the body, but also to the Pretoria home of Patrick Manyapi, a construction worker and patient of Sabadia’s, who allegedly set up the two “hitmen” who abducted Zahida.
Van Zyl said they were told at Manyapi’s home that he had already been arrested that Saturday morning, apparently by Pretoria detectives. He said it was not true that a confession by Manyapi had led police to Sabadia.
Potchefstroom detective superintendent Blackie Swart, chief investigator in the case, confirmed Manyapi had been arrested on Saturday after police — he would not say which — had acted on information from an “informant member of the public”. He confirmed a third suspect, Albert Moeketsyne of Pretoria suburb Atteridgeville, had been arrested on Monday.
Police were still looking for a fourth man, Richard Malema, this week. Sabadia and Manyapi appeared in court on Tuesday and Moeketsyne on Wednesday. It is understood confessions have been made all around.
But the murder has left a family bereft and — perhaps predictably — some relatives say the full force of the law, as it stands, will not be enough. Said one: “It is not just our family now, but people have been asking for a year or so: ‘Bring back the hanging law’.”