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“The police can confirm that a case of murder was opened at Vosloorus police station and transferred to Katlehong North police station, where an investigation is under way. No arrests have been made yet, but the investigation’s at an advanced stage” said Gauteng police spokesperson Mavela Masondo.
The drama allegedly started when Khumalo, accompanied by his crew and Gauteng Patrollers, popularly known as amapanyaza, descended on a house in Katlehong in the southeast of Johannesburg on Wednesday.
APARTHEID-STYLE INTERROGATION
TACTICS
Apparently acting on a tip-off, they cornered the occupant of the house, one Robert
“Kicks” Varrie, and began interrogating him.
Varrie’s girlfriend Eunice Raadt, with whom he lived with their two children, was not home at the time.
Raadt told City Press that she was at a nearby hair salon when an entourage of vehicles passed by.
She said:
I started hearing people making a noise, excited to see Xolani from the Moia Love TV show Sizokuthola. I noticed many people, including amapanyaza and some camera crew. I rushed home and, on arrival, I found my baby on the ground and could hear Kicks screaming inside the house.
Raadt said she was prevented from entering the house, but, through the slightly open door, she was able to see a group of armed men, wearing masks, holding down her boyfriend.
Varrie’s pants were down, with his underwear showing some wetness. According to her, the crew found two sachets containing drugs, but kept demanding that he give them more.
“They then placed a plastic bag around his head and pepper-sprayed it before they suffocated him with it. As they pinned him down, they said he should move his right leg as a signal that he wanted to confess.” she said.
EVIDENCE CONFISCATED
Bystanders were recording the incident on their cellphones while others were trying to call the police to intervene.
Raadt said the “enforcers” then began confiscating people’s cellphones, including hers.
She said:
A few minutes later, I saw a white double-cab bakkie reversing into our yard. Four well-built men loaded Kicks into the back of the bakkie and sped away. I suspect that he was dead at the time and they’d dressed him in my clothes after he’d messed up the ones he was wearing. They clearly didn’t know whose clothes to dress him in.
After the enforcers disappeared with the father of her children, Raadt said that she and some friends started looking for him at local clinics. They were later told that he had been dropped at the Thelle Mogoerane regional hospital in Vosloorus.
On arriving there, Raadt and her friends were told by the nurses that Varrie had been declared dead at the time the bakkie had dropped him off.
Rethabile Mofokeng, who lives close to the couple’s house, was also very unlucky with the group of enforcers.
The crew went to her house and searched it, as well as allegedly taking some cash and cellphones. They then demanded that she tell them where she kept her drugs.
“They stripped me before placing a plastic tube around my face and pepper-spraying me. They told me to signal with my right foot when I was ready to tell them where the drugs were. I kept signalling and they’d repeat the process until I told them I was losing my breath. They then left me and went to the guy with whom they’d found me,” she said.
ANOTHER VICTIM BEDRIDDEN
Mofokeng said the assailants then started assaulting her friend, Tsietsi Peele, who was also at the scene. They used a police baton [generally referred to as a donkiekierie] to beat him until it broke. They wanted to know where he was hiding the drugs he was known to sell.
She said:
He kept on telling them that the person who used to sell the drugs had relocated and no longer lived in the yard, but they weren’t convinced. They changed their interrogation method and started throwing him up and letting him fall down while [his arms] were tied with iron bars behind [his back].
Peele was still bedridden yesterday when
City Press visited him in Katlehong. The scars and swelling on his body were testimony to a brutal beating. He showed us the remains of the baton with which he had been beaten so hard that it had broken.
According to at least two bystanders, the armed crew also included the local crime-fighting unit Thatha-Zonke, which is notorious for its adaptation of an apartheid-era asphyxiation method called “tubing”. The method involves placing a tube around the face of a victim, preventing them from inhaling oxygen.
In video footage in possession of City Press, the leader of Thatha-Zonke, Mandla Nkambule, appears walking alongside Khumalo and his crew. Nkambule is seen holding a rifle.
Source: City Press