A colleague mentioned an oft-repeated refrain that South Africa is a movie, with the twist that we are all wittingly or otherwise part of the cast. Hardly a week passes without some jaw-dropping news or revelation capturing the collective attention of the nation.
We’d venture that any other people but we in the south would be numbed silly by the sheer pace of it all while we take it in our normal stride all the while waiting for the next bombshell, which routinely comes, ready or not.
This week has been particularly fast paced even for the standards we are accustomed to, leaving even pedigreed newshounds panting for breath. It was in keeping with the pace since one Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi called a press briefing and let the proverbial cat out of the bag. To use another figure of speech, and seemingly apt description, the general has opened a Pandora’s box; a gift that keeps on giving.
Among the news – such as the jaw-dropper about member of the mayoral committee of Joburg, Kenny Kunene, caught almost with his pants down at a residence when police came knocking to arrest a notorious thug – was the breaking story that four suspects had been arrested in connection with the murder of DJ Sumbody. The case had almost gone cold.
Now, that’s one of the names mentioned by Mkhwanazi in the famous press conference where he blew the lid on alleged links between the police minister and top police officers with the criminal underworld of political killings and drug dealings.
He wouldn’t delve deeper into what he was alleging then, but it would be foolish not to link Mkhwanazi’s revelations with such developments as the arrest of the suspected killers of DJ Sumbody.
The wheels of justice are suddenly turning a tad faster, and we are glad that the work of the police task team put together to investigate and help halt the death industry fueled by contract killings of politicians and businesspeople in KwaZulu-Natal has not stopped. What’s coming out in the open from the murky deadly world is that nothing is as random as it might appear to the eye. Everything seems somehow linked.
If what has come to light thus far is anything to go by, the judicial commission of inquiry chaired by Acting Deputy Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga to probe the allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system, has its work cut out.
Equally welcome along with the DJ Sumbody breakthrough, is the revelation that the work of the political killings task team has not stopped despite the disbandment of the unit.
The teams was involved in the breakthrough, and Sunday World has been informed that its members also took over the probe into the attempted murder of actress Tebogo Thobejane.
We reported last week about the preliminary results of ballistic tests on evidence collected from DJ Sumbody’s murder scene and the scene of the Thobejane’s attack, suggesting one murder weapon was used in both ambushes.
On the evidence of this, the nation can be assured that police have a competent team of sleuths on the tail of the wanton killers running amok out there.
