OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 8.45pm.
A CAR-HIJACKER, convicted of shooting a man dead and seriously injured his female companion in a hijacking in 1983, applied for amnesty on Monday on the grounds that he had been acting with political motive.
Saint Mkhululi Manyamalala, 30, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he had needed a larger and faster car to transport a weapons cache to Soweto — where he was serving as a member of an African National Congress’s self-defence unit.
He said he saw a red Toyota Corolla parked in Gosforth Park in Germiston and decided that it would be a more suitable vehicle for transporting the weapons.
Armed with firearms, he and other SDU members approached the vehicle in which Willem Froneman and Ruth Barker were sitting and ordered them to get out. “The man pretended to unfasten the safety belt and he drew a firearm and fired a single shot at me. He missed and I at the same time fired three shots at him. He died instantly,” Manyamalala said.
He said one of the shots struck the woman, wounding her. “We did not kill her as it was not our intention to kill any person,” he said.
After ordering her out of the vehicle, he dumped Froneman’s body and drove off in the vehicle.
Manyamalala was arrested 18-months after the youths accompanying him were caught by police while in possession of the stolen vehicle. He was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for murder, attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms.