War Party. Greg Ardé

Newcastle opposition councillor Koos Vorster spoke about the financial hole into which Newcastle had fallen. During Rehman’s term of office the ruling ANC had approved a host of capital investment projects which it couldn’t afford, using a combination of loans and grants from central government. At the same time Newcastle was owed over R1 billion by residents for unpaid services such as electricity, water and refuse removal. Vorster said that for an entire decade the ANC avoided the tough call of demanding payment for services and instead dipped into different budgets to fund its expenditure, raiding electricity deposits and staff leave provisions. “They used other people’s money and they were warned not to do this,” Vorster said.

      When Newcastle splashed R400 million on a swish new, sevenstorey municipal building, National Treasury warned against it. Locals refer to the building, which overlooks the old town hall, as “Dubai”. It was totally unaffordable. Rehman led the plans for the building but denied as “blatant untruth” that he ran the municipality into the ground. He said that the former CFO Le Roux didn’t have a “developmental” mindset, and this was why he had been let go.

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      To many locals “Dubai” became a byword for ANC profligacy, be it under Rehman or Mahlaba. But theft is one thing, murder another. The case against Mahlaba is a complicated story, and it revolves around a few key figures in Newcastle, including Mahlaba’s old comrades Arthur Zwane and Senzo Khumalo, both leading figures in the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).

      Attempting to unpack the Newcastle story, I heard a fascinating account of a policeman, who will remain unnamed. The man apparently hunted down criminals, and his tenacious detective work was rewarded with scores of successful prosecutions. His life story sounded astonishing. He survived gunfights, mad life-and-death scrambles, and an attack on his home by taxi hitmen. He was close to the investigation into Mahlaba, Newcastle’s bright young mayor.

      In February 2019 Mahlaba featured in a story in the Sunday Tribune, shortly before he was inaugurated as mayor. In the story, Mahlaba accused a South African Police Service (SAPS) multidisciplinary task team reporting to police minister Bheki Cele of standing between him and the job of first citizen of Newcastle. Mahlaba, the chairperson of the ANC’s Emalahleni region, claimed the task team was conspiring with his rivals to link him to the murder of Wandile Ngubeni. Ngubeni was the deputy chairperson of the ANC Youth League in the region. He was gunned down outside the Ikasi tavern in Newcastle’s Madadeni township late one Saturday night in May 2016.

      The Tribune said Mahlaba had laid a complaint against police officers in the task team with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID). In his affidavit Mahlaba requested an investigation into the conduct of the officers, who, he said, had assaulted and tortured one of his friends as well as an ANC member in an attempt to force him to implicate Mahlaba in the murder of Ngubeni. “They appear to have upped the ante recently to pursue a false arrest of me to embarrass me prior to my imminent inauguration as the mayor of Newcastle,” he was quoted as saying.

      The Tribune report said Mahlaba named a police officer and a political rival who were behind the plot against him. He further claimed his political opponent had often bragged of having close ties with police minister Bheki Cele. After his friend and the ANC member were detained, assaulted and then released following a High Court order, they had opened cases of kidnapping, attempted murder and defeating the ends of justice.

      The day after the Ngubeni murder, a SAPS source told me that cops received a call from an informer who claimed that Mahlaba’s “boys” had killed Ngubeni. The informer said the killers meant to hit ANCYL regional secretary Mafika Mndebele but wounded him in the leg instead and shot Ngubeni dead by mistake, apparently because Mafika had lent Ngubeni an ANC jacket on the night of the murder. The shooting occurred where patrons sat at tables outside the Ikasi tavern.

      Inside the tavern the next day, cops watched CCTV footage in which one of the killers was recognised. Later that day there was a disagreement among police as to who would carry the docket. It is a complicated story – let’s just say it was an early indication that the investigation would be highly contested.

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      Soon after the investigation started, cops were told that one of their colleagues had taken a R100,000 bribe from a local ANC heavy. This created divisions in the investigative team and fuelled rumours of cops on the take.

      When CCTV footage of the shooting was shared among the cops, an informant identified one of the men at the scene as “Cebo Buthelezi, one of Sputla’s guys”. More about Sputla later, but for the sake of this chapter, he’s a big taxi boss in northern KZN with a history so menacing that he deserves a book of his own. The informant said Cebo Buthelezi, Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Xulu were the killers and they were hiding out in Johannesburg.

      After this information was relayed to the cops, they apparently dithered. As a result the informer got restless and told ANC comrades in Newcastle, who called then police minister Nathi Nhleko, who in turn dispatched a team of cops to Johannesburg to pounce on the suspects. There they established that men from Newcastle had arrived in a stolen Audi, the same vehicle that had been used as a getaway car in the July 2016 murder of Newcastle ANC councillor candidate Thembi Mbongwa. She was shot dead in front of her husband and children at their home in Osizweni ahead of the local government elections and two months before Wandile Ngubeni was murdered at the tavern.

      In Johannesburg, cops found Sbu Sibiya in a back room in a shack settlement near Germiston. Sibiya ratted on Cebo Xulu, Sputla’s nephew, and also turned on Cebo Buthelezi, who was tracked down. Police took Cebo Buthelezi and Sbu Sibiya back to Madadeni, where they apparently said they had been hired by Dr Mahlaba to harass ANC members and disrupt local ANC branch meetings.

      The suspects agreed to make a confession, but before they could two lawyers inexplicably arrived, apparently demanding to speak to them before they were questioned. The cops refused. Shortly afterwards the inter-ministerial task team reporting to Bheki Cele was set up and took over the docket. A few months later cops heard a hit had been put out on one of the key investigators.

      In the meantime, two men, Bongi Mazibuko and Reginald “Jomo” Nkosi, entered the Newcastle murder story. They came forward with information on Wandile Ngubeni’s murder, hoping to cash in on the R100,000 reward which the ANC was offering. Apparently, Mazibuko and Nkosi had taken Cebo Buthelezi and Sbu Sibiya to the tavern. The two were keen to give statements to the police but Mayor Mahlaba allegedly dispatched his lawyers to speak to them, though not before the two gave witness statements of their own volition.

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      In March 2019 the ANC Youth League in Newcastle released an extraordinary statement on Facebook welcoming developments in the cases of Wandile Ngubeni and Thembi Mbongwa.

      The statement opened with a biblical quote from Luke 8:17: “For there is nothing that is hidden that will not be disclosed and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”

      The statement also roasted the thugs masquerading as leaders who ruled with guns. The shootings of Thembi Mbongwa and Wandile Ngubeni, it said, were both coordinated by “one heartless bloodthirsty mastermind”. The same alleged hitman, Sbu Sibiya, had killed both and the ANCYL called on “Dr Ntuthuko Mahlaba to come clean in all these shenanigans”.

      To refresh everyone’s memory, the ANCYL recounted the fact that Mahlaba laid charges of police corruption in 2016 when Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Buthelezi were arrested and did the same in January 2019 when Jomo Nkosi and Bongi Mazibuko were brought in for questioning.

      In 2016, during the nomination process for ANC local government ward candidates, the ANCYL said there was violence at ANC branch meetings, including two incidents involving Sbu Sibiya and Cebo Buthelezi, who arrived there with Mahlaba.

      The ANCYL said its member Arthur Zwane held meetings with Nkosi and Mazibuko and “in these meetings, Jomo and Bongi informed Comrade Arthur about the details of the killing of Wandile Ngubeni. They were explicit that Dr Mahlaba was behind the planning of the killing of Cde Mafika Mndebele.” Mahlaba hotly denied involvement in the conspiracy.

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      When