Mzilikazi wa Afrika
Police are investigating allegations that taxi bosses in Mpumalanga employed 40 Mozambicans as hired assassins.
Investigators say taxi bosses hired the Mozambicans as the foreigners would be harder to track down than local hired assassins.
“Our intelligence unit has found out that the Mozambican hit men are armed with powerful automatic rifles,” said Mpumalanga MEC for Safety and Security Luckson Mathebula.
He said it was suspected that police who owned taxis arranged for the Mozambicans to enter South Africa. “We’ve already identified the leaders of the Mozambican hit men and where they are based in Mozambique.”
Over the past two weeks, six South African hit men – five of them members of the Federation of Local and Long Distance Taxi Associations, and one a police officer – were arrested in Mpumalanga. Four suspects appeared in the Mapulaneng Magistrate’s Court, near Bushbuckridge, on Wednesday in connection with taxi murders. They were refused bail and the case was postponed to June 19.
Last Friday, Sergeant Kenneth Mathebula (33), a member of the visible policing unit in Bushbuckridge and the South Africa Local and Long Distance Taxi Association, appeared in the Lydenburg Circuit Court. He allegedly shot dead two taxi drivers four weeks ago. He was not asked plead and was refused bail.
The trial of Sam “Mamelodi” Mbonani will resume in the White River Magistrate’s Court on June 8. He was caught driving a car allegedly used in more than 10 drive-by taxi shootings.
Lowveld police representative Captain Ben Mkhonto says 28 people have been shot dead in the region in the past six months. “The R40 … between Nelspruit and Bushbuckridge has become a killing field … a slaghuis, for these taxi killings,” Mkhonto said.
Jackson Mthembu, Mpumalanga MEC for Public Works, Roads and Transport, says 942 taxi owners illegally operate 1 143 taxis in Mpumalanga, and 33 taxi associations refuse to register with the department.
“Something terrible has gone wrong in the taxi industry. We must appoint one association as the mother body of all associations to put a stop to the violence,” he suggests.
Mthembu and Mathebula have been accused by the president of the National Taxi Drivers’ Organisation, Themba Mgabhi, of owning and operating taxis. Mpumalanga Premier Matthews Phosa denies these allegations and has appointed them, with other MECs, to a special African National Congress task team to investigate taxi violence in the area.- African Eye News Service