Journey to death in an unmarked car

WITNESS Ndeya and his friends were standing outside their house in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, when two plainclothes policemen strode up to them with guns drawn.

This was around 8pm on Friday November 5 last year. It would be the last night Ndeya would spend at his home in SA before being illegally handed over to Zimbabwean police.

On November 20, he was dead, his body riddled with bullets.

This account was pieced together from sworn statements and interviews with two of Ndeya's friends and his nephew, Shepard Tshuma, who were present that night and who were all arrested.

Ndeya's friends, Maquawe Sibanda and Nelson Ndlovu, said that, after approaching them, the gun-toting men identified themselves as police and ordered them to lie on the floor. Minutes later, more police arrived.

Said Tshuma: "While they were busy assaulting us, they were calling each other with names. It was 'Cowboy' and 'General Sibiya', and if I met them again, I could point them [out]."

Major-General Shadrack Sibiya and Captain Cowboy Maluleke are senior Hawks officials. Their names appear repeatedly in the witness accounts of the "renditions".

Sibiya denied the allegations. "I have never arrested anybody in Diepsloot," he said.

Maluleke referred questions to Hawks spokesman McIntosh Polela, who said: "None of our members are involved in any form of rendition."

But Sibanda and Ndlovu confirmed that Sibiya and Maluleke were present during their arrests.

This week, the Zimbabwean nationals identified Sibiya from a picture shown to them by the Sunday Times.

Police officers repeatedly told them they were being arrested in connection with the murder of a policeman in Zimbabwe.

The four were held at Orlando police station in Soweto for two days before they were loaded into a police van and driven towards Zimbabwe.

Sibanda and Ndlovu were dropped off before the border.

"[They] were feeling pity for us because we were going to be killed in Zimbabwe," said Sibanda.

Ndeya and Tshuma were not so lucky. They were transferred to an unmarked BMW and were driven over the border, where they were handed to five men.

Said Tshuma: "[They] introduced themselves as Zimbabwean police. They told us that we are under arrest for the murder of a police officer in Zimbabwe."

They were both taken to the Bulawayo police station, and Tshuma was released a week later. When he returned to visit Ndeya several days later, "the police responded by telling us that Witness was killed by other police".

Ndeya's body was later released and buried in his home village of Cholocho.

His wife, Simiso Ndlovu, who lives in Diepsloot, confirmed that she had buried her husband. "He died in Zimbabwe. I don't know why."

Zimbabwean police declined to comment.