Police Minister Fikile Mbalula yesterday stepped into a row over a dead gangster being blamed for a high-profile political assassination in KwaZulu-Natal.
He accused crime intelligence officers on the case of being conflicted, implicated and protecting the killers.
The minister's bizarre attack on the policemen came after crime intelligence officers suggested the Hawks had only identified the dead man as the killer to relieve the political pressure on the unit.
This week the Hawks identified Jabulani Gayinkani Mdunge, a notorious cash-van robber, as the man who shot Sindiso Magaqa in an ambush in Umzimkhulu on July 13.Magaqa, a local councillor and a former ANC Youth League secretary-general, died two weeks ago. Two fellow councillors were wounded in the attack.
But crime intelligence officers in the area said the Hawks had the wrong man.
Mbalula told a memorial service for Magaqa last week that the councillor's killers would "s**t themselves" and promised that their names would be revealed soon. Four days later the Hawks named Mdunge as the killer in the identikits issued soon after the shootings.
But the Sunday Times can reveal that Mdunge's face does not match those of the identikits.
A police officer said Mdunge was just a decoy for the Hawks to cover their own "incompetency".
He said: "Do a simple thing. Go to his [Mdunge's] home, ask for his picture and compare it to identikits issued by the Hawks after Magaqa's killing."The Sunday Times showed Mdunge's family the two images and they were categorical that neither man was their relative.
Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi of the Hawks insisted the unit had the right man.
"Jabulani Mdunge was linked to Magaqa's case through forensic investigation," he said.
Mdunge was shot dead during a failed cash-van robbery on September 1. Two other gang members were also shot dead.Crime intelligence officers said they were close to establishing that Mdunge was not even in Umzimkhulu on the day of the hit.
"[Mdunge] ... was never part of the people we were looking into. Something doesn't add up," said a crime intelligence officer.
Mbalula said the crime intelligence officers on the case were "talking bulls**t".
"They are conflicted themselves. They know all the killers in Umzimkhulu and they are protecting the killers.
"We must remove them from the area because they are implicated in these murders," he said.
"They are undermining the work of the police. Jabulani Mdunge was positively linked to Magaqa's murder with one of the heist gang who was injured in the heist and is in police custody."
Mdunge's family said that although he was a violent criminal and a member of a gang that targeted cash vans, he was not an assassin.
His sister Nomthandazo said: "He confided a lot to me. I would have known if he was a contract killer. I have heard about his other activities with cash vans."She could not remember if her brother was home on July 13, but said that he was there "most of the time" throughout the month because he was building a home on the family plot.
Magaqa's family were not told about Mdunge being the man behind his death, according to Magaqa's uncle Vuma Magaqa. However, Mulaudzi said the family were kept informed regularly on the investigation.
The Sunday Times also spoke to the family of Manqoba Herman Zakwe, one of the other men shot dead in the cash heist. The third man shot dead was a foreigner, David Shibambo.
Zakwe's family said he was a criminal involved in heists but were adamant he was not a hitman. They said Zakwe was not one of the men in the identikits and that while they knew many of his accomplices, they did not recognise the faces in the drawings...