WHY WAS MANDEBVU KILLED?
MYSTERY surrounds the death of Zimbabwean music promoter Ishmael “Mandebvu” Nkata in Cape Town on Friday night.
He died in a hail of bullets and his friends have been battling to find out why he was targeted in the assassination.
Mandebvu operated a joint called “The Gardens” in Cape Town where he occasionally asked Zimbabwean artistes to perform.
The joint was closed after someone was shot within the premises, but was reopened recently.
A number of conspiracy theories have emerged.
One of the stories, doing the rounds among his circle of friends, is that Mandebvu had been warned, after the death of one of their colleagues, he was likely to be shot within two months.
However, two months passed without any incident.
“The other story is that someone, who was in need of some money, borrowed from Mandebvu and was asked to cede his car registration book as a guarantee,” said a source.
“Later, the same person came back saying while he hadn’t found the money to pay back the debt, he wanted his car registration book back.
“This created some tension and there is a feeling that it led to the horror we saw on Friday night.”
Cape Town is also the theatre for some of the most powerful drug lords in Africa and shootouts are very common.
It was ranked in 10th place by Statista in its ranking of the most dangerous cities in the world in 2022, by murder rate per 100 000 inhabitants.
Only nine other cities five in Mexico, two in Brazil and two in Venezuela were deemed more dangerous than Cape Town.
Tijuana in Mexico, which is the headquarters of some of the biggest drug lords in the world, tops the list.