Parents baffled by son’s ‘assassination’ plan
WHEN Elvis Ramosebudi left his parents’w house they believed he was going to meet someone who wanted to fund his project.
Instead, he was walking into a police sting.
Last Wednesday, members of the Hawks lured Ramosebudi to Midrand. They had been investigating him since October last year, and they believed he was about to act on an assassination plan to kill 23 cabinet members and prominent South Africans.
The sting happened in a Midrand office, with undercover cops pretending to be potential funders.
“We played him dumb, he gave us everything, what he wanted to do, and after that we arrested him,” said Hawk’s spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Malaudzi.
After his arrest, police raided his Soshanguve home, where he lives with his parents.
“He didn’t come back alone. He was accompanied by the police, and they came into the house and searched it. They turned the place around looking for something,” said Ramosebudi’s father, Stanley.
Yesterday morning, Ramosebudi made his first appearance in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, where more details emerged about the bizarre assassination plot and the 33-yearold’s alleged attempt to solicit millions of rand from companies and well known businessmen. He has been charged provisionally with conspiracy to commit murder. But his parents are baffled. “My wife and I know nothing about the arrest. We just saw him on TV now. We don’t understand why he was arrested,” said Stanley. “The last time I spoke to him was when we saw him on Wednesday.”
The Hawks allege that Ramosebudi was a founding member of the Anti-State Capture Death Squad Alliance, and the Anti-White Monopoly Capitalists Regime.
The elite crime fighting team believe he drew up a list of 23 individuals he planned to assassinate.
His list included Jacob Zuma, his son Duduzane, re-
mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane, businessman Fana Hlongwane and the Gupta brothers. Hawks believe he planned to kill them with a sniper’s rifle.
According to the Hawks, he tried to raise R140 million by sending letters to companies and business figures asking for funding.
“Some of these people became afraid,” said Malaudzi.
When Ramosebudi appeared in court, questions were also asked about his mental health. A letter in his case docket said he should be sent for psychiatric evaluation.
“It is not normal for a person to use his personal bank accounts and go around asking for money,” said prosecutor King Masemola.
Magistrate Vincent Ratshivumo asked the accused if he had been in a mental institution. “I can’t recall,” he said.
“My son is okay,” said Stanley. “He doesn’t have any mental illnesses we know of.”
The Hawks agreed: “No, upstairs he is fine, we checked him, he has no mental deficiencies.”
Stanley describes his son as a bit of a home body, who attended a private school. “But, he wasn’t a big fan of school. He went as far as Grade 10.”
The Hawks investigation continues. They haven’t ruled out the arrest of further suspects. One person suggested the letters might have been written by someone else.
“He only has a Grade 10, but the English used in those letters suggest the possibility of an accomplice,” said the source.
Ramosebudi will be back in court on Tuesday.
ELVIS Ramosebudi appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court yesterday. The 33-year-old was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of plotting to murder South Africans who he believed had benefited from state capture.
There are 19 people on his list, apparently. They range from cabinet ministers to senior managers of state-owned enterprises. He was arrested after going around to find sponsors for his awkwardly named Anti-State Capture Death Squad Alliance.
The timing, the naming and the planning (or lack thereof) are so deeply flawed, so obviously contrived and, quite frankly, so absolutely bizarre, that cynics are wondering – now that the expensive and discredited Bell Pottinger PR firm has dropped its Gupta family contract and fled – if this isn’t a cheaper, far more basic bid to deflect attention from our increasingly beleaguered President Jacob Zuma and the Saxonwold family, which drag like a millstone around his neck. Even magistrate Vincent Ratshibvumo was sufficiently taken aback by what was being placed before him that he was moved to ask Ramosebudi if he had even been treated for mental illness. It’s a fair question, we all wonder that. But equally, in this day and age, no threat of terror can be taken lightly anywhere in the world. South Africa has a record of lone wolves – of dubious mental stability and even intelligence – wreaking absolute havoc: Dimitri Tsafendas, Barend Strydom and Johann Nel are just three who come to mind.
But we must guard against securocrats seeing this as an opportunity to generate a crisis and demanding more powers and closing down the right to free speech and assembly.
The Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority have more than enough challenges and problems as it is, without inflating the dangers of a delusional man. They need to use good judgement in assessing risks.