HO NKGA LEFOTHA,

Hela bana ba thari entsho (in the words of the famous Comedian...Blacks Only)your help is requested. Please read the attached and forward to all megwanti yako Pretoria that you know because we really do need to catch these spineless pigs. This is a sequel to my blog titled Rest in peace Baba Motha

Please help us to find the killers of my brother, pleads Kaizer Nyatsumba.

Forty-five years ago two sisters, Maria and Sophie Nkambule, gave birth to two boys, Kaizer Nyatsumba and Elphus Motha respectively, on the same day and a mere two to three hours apart. The sisters, daughters of Semia Shakoane and Miso Nkambule, were the wives of Silverton Nyatsumba and Johannes Motha respectively.

During our teenage years, I gave him the name Adonis, which he subsequently adopted and by which he was generally known. Adonis and I, the two sisters’ sons, were inseparable as we grew up in Mpumalanga, spending much of our childhood together, and remained close right through to our adulthood in Gauteng, always regarding ourselves as twins of a special kind. That ended most brutally on Wednesday, June 3, when my beloved brother “disappeared”, only to be found two days later dead, with multiple stab wounds throughout his body, and dumped near GaRankuwa.

It was at 7.45am on Thursday, June 4 that I first learned of his “disappearance”. I had started a new job three days earlier, which days were spent on an out-of-town orientation programme, and I was on my way to the office in Rosebank for the very first day, when I received a call from a friend in Nelspruit asking me if I had heard about Adonis’s “disappearance”.

To say I was shocked would be a gross understatement. Never in our lives had Adonis and I ever done such a thing, hence I knew immediately that something had gone terribly wrong.

I was to learn later, from my sister-in-law Chunku Motha (nee Mashiane), that Adonis had arrived home at Chantelle, Pretoria around 7.30pm on Wednesday evening, and immediately announced that he was going to see his friend, Lucky Manzini, at the nearby township of Soshanguve. He knew Soshanguve very well, having spent 19 years working first as a teacher and later as a school principal there. I was told that he did not return home.

And yet, our well-known closeness notwithstanding, I was not called later that night when it became apparent that my brother was not returning home, nor was I – or any other member of the family – called the following morning. Instead, my sister-in-law sent three “Please Call Me” messages – the first one at 3.46:18, the next one at 3.46:28 and the last one at 3.46:40 – to Manzini, and then the last one just before 6am.

Manzini subsequently told me that it was when he called her number that he learned that Adonis had left home to see him (Manzini was not expecting Adonis that evening), and that he had not returned home. He called another mutual friend of theirs in Soshanguve to ask if he had seen Adonis, and that friend called another one in Nelspruit, who then alerted me immediately.

My wife left for Pretoria immediately, and together with Chunku and Manzini they searched for my brother at different hospitals and police stations. I joined them some four hours later, but on my way to Pretoria I decided to call Talk Radio 702’s Eye Witness News with a request that they broadcast the fact that Adonis had disappeared, and asking listeners who had seen either him or the car that he was driving on Wednesday evening to call me. When I informed her, as a courtesy, of my intention, my sister-in-law asked me not to do so, arguing that it was still early to panic. This was a good 16 hours after my brother had “disappeared”! After further consulting the extended family, all of whom agreed with me, I called the station with my request.

After a wild, two-day search, the police called us on Friday evening, saying that they had found a body in the GaRankuwa area. A younger brother and I travelled with them to the scene, and there, on a veld, we found Adonis: lifeless, with stab wounds throughout his body, with an attempt having been made to burn him (his clothes were half burnt).

Our maternal uncles and our sisters travelled to Pretoria the following day, and a request was presented to my sister-in-law: given the terrible and suspicious circumstances of my brother’s murder, coupled with the facts that there are many unanswered questions and that all but one of his children are in Mpumalanga, the family wanted Adonis buried at White River, where his parents, grand-parents and other relatives lie buried.

She rejected this request very firmly, saying that it was my brother’s wish to be buried in Pretoria. Some of my brother’s wishes, she added, were that he should be buried within three days of his death, that she can re-marry immediately after she has mourned his death for a maximum of two weeks, and that she had to go to his cemetery every Sunday to read his favourite Sunday newspapers to him. We found these so-called wishes most ridiculous. We argued that even if some of them were true, Adonis, who could hardly harm a fly, would certainly not have known that he would die such a terrible death, in very mysterious circumstances.

In the end, my sister-in-law went ahead with the funeral on Saturday, with not a single one of Adonis’s relatives present, giving my brother something that came close to a pauper’s burial, according to those who were present.

Adonis was the friendliest and most affable person that I have ever known, and he was blessed with a special talent to keep his emotions in check.

Nobody deserves the barbarity that was visited upon my brother, but least of all Adonis. He was the gentlest and most genial of souls. It is totally unforgivable, therefore, that he could die such a terrible, such a painful and such a cruel death, with stab wounds throughout all parts of his body, with unsuccessful attempts having been made to burn him. I hope that you, dear readers, will join my family and me in the hope that both those responsible for this vilest of deeds, and the brains behind it, will be found, arrested, successfully prosecuted and sent away for the rest of their lives. These savages deserve no less.

Should you have any information that can lead to these savages’ arrests, please call the investigating officer, Inspector De Jong, on 083-654-2800, or our private investigator, Marinus Venter, on 072-301-7219. Every piece of information is helpful.

Kaizer Nyatsumba is a senior business executive in Johannesburg.


Kea leboha.