Eight alleged gang members had been arrested at the weekend in connection with the fatal shooting of a former African National Congress MP, Reggie Oliphant.
Oliphant (53) was shot dead in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats while seated in his vehicle late last Thursday. Police said a man approached Oliphant’s vehicle and fired a single shot at his head at close range. He was taken to Groote Schuur Hospital where he died shortly after being admitted.
Police representative Captain Jacques Wiese said on Monday that members of the serious violent crime unit raided a house in Gazelle Street in Mitchells Plain after a tip-off on Saturday night.
They arrested a 24-year-old man who the community allege shot dead Oliphant. Seven other men, all members of the Jukkies and Home Boys gangs, were also arrested. They were all questioned by police at the weekend.
Wiese said the 24-year-old man and two of his accomplices would appear in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. The motive for the murder appeared to have been an attempted armed robbery or vehicle hijacking, police said.
Oliphant or Uncle Reggie as he was known to his friends, was a prominent civic and United Democratic Front activist and chairman of the UDF southern Cape region in the 1980s.
He was a founder member of the former Bridgetown Civic Movement and the Saamstaan newspaper. Oliphant was an MP from 1994 to 1999. – Sapa