Day the cops cheered her father’s shooting
2pm on Tuesday February 3 2009, Ellen Mkhize and her daughter Zamambo were stuck in traffic on Umgeni Road, central Durban.
“We thought it was an accident,” says Zamambo. “Later on we realised it was actually a shooting.” Then it hit her. “Mom, isn’t this dad’s car?”
Taxi boss Bongani Mkhize lay slumped in the driver’s seat of his bullet-riddled black Lexus.
“We saw everything. We could see that he didn’t have an eye. We could see that his face was rearranged. After that we had nightmares. We couldn’t sleep. We had to live on pills.”
Mkhize was shot by members of the national intervention and Cato Manor units. They claimed he was a suspect in the shooting of Nkosi Mbongeleni Zondi, a close relative of President Jacob Zuma, and that he’d shot at them when they tried to arrest him.
Zamambo remembers the Cato Manor officers celebrating by her father’s corpse. “We saw them coming in with their cars, shaking hands, smiling, clapping. They were celebrating.”
Evidence in a civil case the Mkhize family won against the police casts serious doubt on the officers’ version of events.
Three ballistics reports show all shots were fired at the vehicle. The bullet casings found in Mkhize’s Lexus didn’t match the gun next to him, which didn’t have any of his fingerprints.
Two witnesses interviewed by the Sunday Times said they saw Mkhize being executed. Their stories are corroborated by another two witness who made sworn statements. In addition, a police official has made an affidavit that she was on the phone to Mkhize while he was driving and being shot at.
This case was dealt with extensively in Major-General Johan Booysen’s disciplinary hearing last year chaired by Advocate Nazeer Cassim, who cleared him of any wrongdoing.
But expert investigators, including a veteran detective and a ballistics expert, say Cassim’s reliance on powder residue on Mkhize’s body as an indication that he had fired at the police is misplaced.
It is easy to transfer and is often used to try to frame suspects, they point out.
Zamambo says her dad knew he was going to die. After five leaders of his taxi association had been killed by the Cato Manor squad in just six weeks he obtained a restraining order.
“He went to the police and told them: ‘If I did something wrong, you must take me in front of my lawyer. Do not shoot me.’ ” This didn’t save him.
That his killers are still free leaves her feeling vulnerable. “We are still scared, I won’t lie.”
NIGHTMARES: Zamambo and Ellen Mkhize still live in fear after taxi boss Bongani Mkhize’s death in a hail of police bullets