highly placed cops who were adamant that Sifiso had worked with the apartheid police, but no evidence has ever emerged publicly. Whatever the truth of the matter, Sifiso’s story is instructive for a number of reasons, not least because it was an early indicator of how things would get done in KZN, a template for the broader violence that would take hold in the province.
Sifiso’s potted biography goes something like this. He was born in 1961 and became a school teacher in 1989. Then he underwent a giddy rise to the position of provincial deputy secretary of the ANC in 1991 as a protégé of the firebrand Harry Gwala, the “Lion of the Midlands”. By 1994, when Sifiso was elected to the KZN legislature, his gangs of Self-Defence Units (SDUs) ruled Richmond through fear.
Three years later Nkabinde spectacularly cut ties with the ANC when they accused him of being an apartheid-era police spy. His supporters said his rising star threatened a number of ANC members, including Jacob Zuma. After Sifiso left the ANC, he joined Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement (UDM). Thereupon he called a meeting of ANC Richmond councillors and, according to his former friend and Richmond mayor Andrew Ragavaloo, a bellicose Sifiso demanded that the entire town council follow him to the UDM. Ragavaloo and his brother-in-law Rodney van der Byl were the only two of the nine ANC councillors who refused to follow their old comrade’s fiery edict. A few days later gunmen pumped 18 bullets into Van der Byl outside his home.
In the ensuing two years a savage war broke out in Richmond, and massacres claimed about 120 lives, including those of four ANC councillors. President Nelson Mandela visited the town repeatedly, decrying the violent scourge but in vain. At the time, I visited Richmond almost every week to file stories for the Daily News and later for the Sunday Tribune. I interviewed the local undertaker back then. His business was booming because, as one resident told me, “Satan is dancing in the streets”. He was referring to Nkabinde.
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At one stage South Africa’s most wanted man was Nkabinde’s lieutenant, a Self-Defence Unit commander, Bob Ndlovu, whose evasive powers became legendary. He survived an astonishing 73 attempts to arrest him. In September 1997 Nkabinde himself was arrested and tried for 16 murders. Three days later Ndlovu was also caught and charged with 14 counts of murder. He was convicted and served 12 years before he was released.
In May 1998 Nkabinde was acquitted of the charges. Seven months later he was dead, aged 38. Gunmen fired 80 rounds into him in the Spar parking lot in the centre of Richmond. In a revenge attack shortly afterwards, 12 members of the ANC-supporting Ndabezitha family were murdered at their home outside the village. That’s mostly ancient history now.
Vic Nkabinde has his mother’s and father’s names tattooed on his left arm. He is a happening young man with a cool haircut and goatee who wears trendy gear. He spent a year in the US working in hospitality. “I have no grudge and no hate,” he tells me. “It has been a long road. As a kid I never understood anything. I just made assumptions about what happened. For a time I did hold a grudge, but the past is the past and we need to move forward. My father’s killers have become my friends.”
This is true. Vic is close to one of the two killers who unleashed a volley of shots into his father’s car. Nine men were arrested for his father’s murder and a number of them were sent to jail, including the men who carried out the shooting, SANDF soldier Sandile Dlamini and former soldier Lincoln Mbikwane. Others tried in connection with the murder included three of significance: Ragavaloo’s bodyguard Siphiwe Shabane, ANC Richmond councillor Joel Mkhize and local policeman Sergeant Anil Jelal.
For the sake of brevity, here is a summary of the assassination gleaned from the indictment, as reported in an IOL story. Simphiwe Dlamini, Nkabinde’s bodyguard, was with him at the time of his murder. Automatic weapons stolen from the police were used in the incident.
On the morning of the killing, the assassins took up position in the centre of Richmond while Joel Mkhize monitored Nkabinde’s movements and alerted them when Sifiso drove into town. Four men in a stolen car drove past Nkabinde’s parked car outside the supermarket. When he emerged from the shop and got into his car, the four pulled up alongside the vehicle and stopped. Mbikwane and Dlamini, wearing balaclavas and surgical gloves, climbed out of their car and let rip with their guns and then fled. Nkabinde was rushed to hospital in Pietermaritzburg but died after failed attempts to resuscitate him.
After the shooting the assassins rendezvoused at the Richmond cemetery, where they and their accomplices met the policeman Anil Jelal, who had been assigned to protect Ragavaloo. Jelal took their guns.
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Years later the ANC’s Willies Mchunu, who was premier of KZN from 2016 to 2019, facilitated peace talks in prison as a result of which the Nkabinde family reconciled with Sifiso’s killers.
Vic said the encounters were a turning point for him. “I met the guys and spoke to them. I cried a lot of tears. With God’s grace, I was freed. It took a lot of courage to get here. It felt like I was in prison, like a prisoner in my own life.
“Sandile [Dlamini] calls me every month. When I met him, we clicked. When I meet him or the others now, we greet and shake hands.”
There’s no disputing, Vic said, that his father helped shape the ANC in KZN. But he was also killed by his comrades. Vic attempted to rationalise it like this twenty years later: “In every family there are problems. He had problems with his brothers, but not the ANC. The ANC was his home and that is why we decided to go back. We felt like we fit. There is no UDM in Magoda.”
A few years ago Vic and his mom led the UDM in Magoda back into the ANC fold. It was a strategic move, Nonhlanhla says. She was a UDM member of Parliament in Cape Town for seven years from 2004. “But there’s nothing the UDM can offer in Richmond anymore.
“The family switched back to the ANC. I couldn’t carry a grudge anymore. I didn’t want hate in my heart. I didn’t want to fear them. I see Sifiso’s killers in town now. They say ‘hello ma’ and I greet them.” She shrugged.
When Sifiso’s killers were sentenced to jail, she emerged from court and told reporters that she hoped the “puppet masters behind my husband’s death” would be revealed. “Hopefully, some big names will be mentioned,” she was quoted as saying. Two decades later she appeared to be resigned to life back in the ANC. Things just didn’t work without the ANC and Magoda’s residents were excluded because of their association with the UDM, she said.
The Nkabindes’ return to the ANC brought peace and stability in the town. “We don’t ever want to go back to the past,” Vic said. “We want one voice, one community and to open the doors of infrastructure. The community of Magoda has always seen our family as leaders. They would have been spurned and branded if we stayed UDM.”
So how did their UDM comrades feel?
Vic smiled. “Some didn’t approve, but they’ve also jumped ship.” Work is scarce in the area and people can’t afford to be excluded from opportunities. Back in the ANC, Sifiso’s family and friends can survive and his soul can rest in peace, his son said. “Now we are back in the ANC, they acknowledge his contribution. I would like to believe there could be a statue to him in Richmond one day. There was never any concrete proof of the spy allegations.
“I would like to believe his spirit resides in his home. He was loved by many. Everyday people say they miss him.”
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Justice Vuka Tshabalala presided in the case against Sifiso’s killers. He said they showed no remorse. Press reports of the trial said they appeared passive. Only Lincoln Mbikwane stunned the crowd in court “by dancing from side to side and laughing
