Richmond shows the connections between power, influence and business. The story I have told here, and others in this book, point to the existence of both an underworld and an overworld in South Africa. The two are enmeshed. The underworld threatens to rear larger than the overworld, and the criminal economy is bigger than we know. Under public pressure, the ANC makes all the right noises about dealing with corruption, but in reality things are pretty nicely stitched up for party insiders and the well-connected.
The unwritten contract around the killing of Sifiso Nkabinde meant that his killers were protected and reinserted in the system. It’s not clear whether the 2017 killings in Richmond are similar in kind to his murder, but these cases stink to high heaven.
Look the other way
Richmond is by no means the only town or city in KZN where local politics have become violent. Violence monitor Mary de Haas reported in 2020 that around 90 people with some official standing have been killed in KZN since 2015. They were councillors, political party officials or municipal officials; most were affiliated to the ANC. This has created an alarming climate of fear, bordering on what might seem like paranoia, though it is not.
A quote from one official I spoke to summed it up. He said: “Greg, please don’t talk to anyone about our conversations. I trust you, but things are getting really bad. I have a colleague under 24-hour guard. He’s terrified. He has to take tranquillisers. I’m scared to put anything down on paper in case they see my name and come after me.”
All this has major implications for government functioning and transparency around the public purse. Honest people are loath to speak about municipal contracts. It could cost you your life, as it did in 2007–8 when two local councillors were killed in the small town of Dundee. One was a member of the ANC, the other of the IFP. Both were killed after blowing the whistle on corruption in the council. Yet the only person to whom the ANC gave succour and assistance was the mayor, who seems to have been part of the plot against the whistleblowers.
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Rakhee Bujram-Van Dyk is a pensive, private woman in her early thirties. She was 18 years old when her dad was shot dead in Dundee, around 11 pm on 15 June 2007. Rakhee’s grief has waned with the years, but the memory of her dad’s murder still lingers. It consumed her mother, Shirley, for the decade in which she outlived him.
Family portraits of Grishen Bujram in his heyday show the lawyer as a jolly chap with a big smile, a shock of hair and a permanent five o’clock shadow. A prized photo shows Grishen with Nelson Mandela. Other snaps in the album include family members dressed in ANC regalia and ANC party election posters featuring Grishen as a candidate.
Rakhee’s dad was seldom home because he was involved in ANC activities or charity work. The family often fed or helped house the poor. But Grishen wasn’t a saintly do-gooder. He loved a party and he ate, drank and smoked with gusto. “He was a character, a big man: heavy. He loved sweets and chocolates. He had cholesterol and diabetes. My mom shouted at him but he said illness wouldn’t get him. He said he would die from a bullet.”
His prediction came to pass. The union lawyer and former councillor was ANC Endumeni sub-regional chair and he was shot dead in his car in Sibongile township, about 4 km from Dundee town centre.
Grishen, then aged 42, was travelling with two comrades, Jabu Ncala and Mdu Sikhakhane, both of whom have since died. They were preparing for a party rally the next day and Grishen had given them a lift home. On the way they had stopped at the KFC to get a snack. This was picked up on CCTV footage. Close to the homes of his comrades, Grishen stopped the car in the street and the men chatted. As they did so, a lone gunman walked up to the driver’s window and pumped six bullets into Grishen and then ran away.
In the small town, the news spread like wildfire. Within an hour Grishen’s nephew woke Shirley by phone to break the news. At first, she cursed, thinking Grishen had been caught carousing, and, if so, she wanted him to spend the night behind bars sobering up. Seconds later her world was shattered when she was told she was a widow left to raise her son Mitesh, 21, and daughters Rakhee, 18, and Risha, 15.
There was little doubt in Shirley’s mind that Grishen was murdered for whistleblowing. He, together with some fellow ANC comrades and the IFP councillor Peter Nxele, had persistently raised issues of corruption at the local municipality. One issue that he was steadfast about was the alleged sale of 17 RDP houses by ANC mayor Thandeka Nukani.
After the murder, the Bujram home was swamped by comrades, including Nukani. They vowed to help bring his killers to book.
In the month before the murder, Shirley received a threatening text, but Rakhee says they couldn’t trace who sent it. “It said my dad was interfering with things he had no business in.” The family only went to the police sometime later when Risha was mugged while coming home from school. Afterwards, Grishen received an SMS that read: “We started with your daughter.”
The initial murder investigation was handled by the Dundee cops, who ruled out robbery but failed to make any further progress or keep in touch with the family. Shirley knew that Grishen had confronted comrades about their alleged involvement in corruption. She became fed up with the delays in the investigation and went to the provincial police top brass.
When senior cops got involved, Rakhee said they discovered the case file was a mess. “It was corrupted. There were no statements or photographs. Within a week the provincial police arrested Bongani Shangase, Nukani’s boyfriend, and her nephew Siyabonga Nukani.” Nukani herself lived a few streets away from the Bujrams. The men were then released on bail.
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Almost 11 months later, to the very day, the IFP councillor Peter Nxele, 73, was shot dead outside his home in Dundee. Nxele was murdered after he flagged that R50,000 was missing from a council business grant. Nothing appeared to have been taken from Nxele at the scene of his murder. His killers didn’t touch his wallet or his revolver, which was still in its holster on his body. In 2009 Shangase, Nukani’s boyfriend, was arrested for his role in this murder.
Shangase was also tried and convicted, along with Nukani’s nephew Siyabonga, of Grishen Bujram’s murder. It emerged in the Bujram case that they had used the mayor’s car, with its personalised number plate “Mzwangwa”, to carry out the killing. Siyabonga drove Shangase and another man in his aunt’s car close to where Grishen and his comrades were parked. They dropped Shangase off and drove around the block while he carried out the shooting.
Shangase received a life sentence and Siyabonga Nukani got 20 years after turning state witness. Rakhee says the men didn’t know her father. “They had no connection to him.”
Mayor Thandeka Nukani was later also charged with Bujram’s murder. In Waterval Prison, her nephew Siyabonga gave statements backing up the accusation. She then allegedly tried to have him poisoned in jail and so was also charged along with her driver and two prison inmates with conspiracy to murder. The murder charges in connection with Siyabonga were withdrawn in 2011 because of insufficient evidence.
At the time, Nukani’s legal fees of R100,000 were rumoured to have been paid by the local ANC branch, then headed by regional chairperson and one-time Greytown mayor Philani Mavundla. Mavundla is well known in KwaZulu-Natal’s business and political circles, having served on the ANC provincial executive committee. He was a key fundraiser for the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust. After Zuma’s fall from power, Mavundla switched over to the National Freedom Party (NFP). Mavundla’s companies were involved in building the King Shaka International Airport, the Sibaya Casino and Eskom’s Ingula power station. Interestingly, when he left the ANC for the NFP he told the media his decision had to do with corruption and political killings.
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