FRIDAY, 3.30PM
The special police investigation team probing this week’s assassination of five African National Congress members, including two newly elected councillors, in Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal, is looking for two Gauteng policemen and one Patrick Skhumbuzo Ndlovu, alias Bob, who they believe can assist with the investigation.
Head of the special investigation team Director Bushie Engelbrecht said the men are believed to be part of a self-defence unit. “They have ranks or posts like commanders in the … SDU organisation,” Engelbrecht said. He added that witnesses to Tuesday night’s massacre at Isimozomeni had come forward and are being questioned. “We are on the verge of a breakthrough,” Engelbrecht said.
Engelbrecht added that the killers are known to police and it is now a matter of tracing them. The perpetrators are believed to be in the Richmond area. The two policemen from Gauteng reportedly went absent without leave from the police a week or two ago, and are believed to have subsequently been dismissed from the police service.
The Richmond massacre came mere days after a by-election called when nine ANC councillors resigned in April in support of axed ANC midlands leader Sifiso Nkabinde. Nkabinde’s National Consultative Forum did not win a single ward in Sunday’s by-election.
FRIDAY, 8.30AM
MORE than a thousand residents of the Richmond area marched on the local police station on Thursday to demand the suspension of policemen they accuse of involvement in the assassination earlier this week of two newly elected ANC councillors. Police have denied allegations that they ordered patrolling soldiers out of the area shortly before five ANC members, including the two councillors, were murdered on Tuesday night. ANC official Dr Zweli Mkhize said that some of the people murdered this week were witnesses to the earlier murder of ANC councillor Rodney van der Bijl.