Still no answers on murder of anti-mining activist ‘Bazooka’
Sikhosiphi Radebe, who was president of the Mzamba Taxi Association and chairman of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, was shot dead in a hail of bullets outside his Mzamba home on March 22, 2016.
It has been two years since taxi boss and anti-mining activist Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe was gunned down … yet it appears the investigation into his murder has been put on the back burner.
So say family members, including his son Tarzan Radebe, who together with the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC) have made a plea to National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) boss Shaun Abrahams to take up investigations into his death which they claim is deliberately being stalled.
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Radebe, who was president of the Mzamba Taxi Association and chairman of the ACC, was shot dead in a hail of bullets outside his Mzamba home on March 22, 2016.
Two assailants, in a hijacked vehicle, had showed up in his homestead pretending to be police officers.
Radebe and the ACC had been fighting to prevent a mining project from going ahead in Xolobeni, and, according to the ACC, several activists had been threatened before his death.
There were also reports that his death may have been as a result of taxi related violence.
In a bid to get answers, Richard Spoor Attorneys, on behalf of Radebe’s family and the ACC, asked Mr Abrahams to assign a lead prosecutor to the case, and respond with a plan and timeline for the completion of the investigation by April 12.
The attorneys quoted a report by the Alternative Development Centre (AIDC) issued last Tuesday, on the investigation by the South Africa Police Service and the Hawks.
The report alludes that the investigation was ‘sabotaged from inside the Saps’ and gives a number of examples of failures in the investigation.
It cites that there were attempts to prevent the family’s forensic specialists from taking part in the autopsy on Radebe’s body.
“The Hawks failed to investigate the scene of the crime with the family’s ballistic expert. The police failed to consolidate the murder with the hijacking docket. The hijacked car used in the murder was returned to its owner less than 48 hours after the shooting,” reads the report.
The report also said the police attempted to suggest that the murder was the result of a ‘feud’ within the Mzamba Taxi Association and had nothing to do with the mining dispute.
Now the family wants to know how long it must wait until the murder is solved.
According to reports, NPA spokesperson Luxolo Tyali has said the NPA had not received any formal request to intervene and did not investigate crimes as it was the Hawks job.
Hawks spokesman Anelisa Feni reportedly told ACC and the Radebe family that the case was still under investigation.
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