On a quiet November night in 2022, DJ Sumbody — a rising star in South Africa’s music scene — was gunned down in a hail of bullets while heading home.
Then in April 2024, engineer Armand Swart was executed in a similar shooting after his company flagged a suspicious government tender in which prices had been inflated by over 4,500 percent.
But dramatic arrests this week are tying those murders and many more together, exposing a murky underworld where criminals consort with political bigwigs for lucrative state tenders.
The arrests came after explosive allegations by a senior police chief who accused the force and South Africa’s police minister of a cover-up.
Deep-rooted procurement corruption has seeped through every level of government for decades, security researcher David Bruce told AFP.
“The whole issue of killings of whistleblowers and assassinations generally is massively interlinked with that issue,” said Bruce, a consultant with the Institute for Security Studies.
Among those arrested this week are a former Johannesburg police officer at the time of DJ Sumbody’s murder, as well as the prime suspect, a businessman named Katiso Molefe.
British media have reported that a South African man of Molefe’s same name and age was sentenced to four years in prison in the United Kingdom in 2003 for drug trafficking.
Two other men, already in custody for the 2023 attempted murder of former reality TV star turned influencer Tebogo Thobejane, are also believed to have played a role.
It doesn’t end there.
During the raid on Monday, police found prominent Johannesburg politician, Kenny Kunene, at Molefe’s home.
Kunene, a Johannesburg city council member, has since been suspended by his party leader, Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, though police have not formally implicated him.
Kunene denied any wrongdoing, saying he was merely trying to assist a journalist seeking to interview Molefe.
At the centre of the widening web is businessman Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala, described locally as a “tenderpreneur”, a term referring to individuals who have made fortunes through government contracts.
Also the head of private security firm, Matlala was arrested in May in connection with the 2023 attempt on his ex-partner Thobejane’s life.
Thobejane, famous for her role in the long-running local soap opera Muvhango, earlier this month denied having “snitched” on Matlala.
“I am a victim,” she told local newspaper News24.
In 2024, Matlala secured a $20 million contract with the national police — now cancelled — despite being implicated in a $125 million public hospital embezzlement scandal.
The Tembisa hospital case cost whistleblower Babita Deokaran her life in 2021, when she was shot nine times outside her home. No arrests have been made in Deokaran’s killing, reflecting the impunity that reigns with only 11 percent of murders solved, according to 2024 police statistics.
“All these three cases are linked somehow,” police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe said, referring to DJ Sumbody, Swart and Thobejane.
Four weapons, including the AK-47 rifle used to kill DJ Sumbody, have been linked through ballistics to at least 10 high-profile cases, she added.
The implications run deep.
KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi last month accused colleagues and Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of burying investigations targeting Matlala.
In a bombshell televised press conference, flanked by armed security forces, Mkhwanazi alleged Mchunu had received payments from a corruption suspect and accused prosecutors of delaying justice.
“We do hope that pretty soon we might find some changes with good dedicated prosecutors and we might see arrests happening,” he said, adding that cases of murdered artists would finally “come to the fore”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has since suspended Mchunu and announced a judicial inquiry into the allegations. But there has been no tanglible action.
South Africa faces one of the world’s highest murder rates, averaging more than 75 killings a day.
Politically motivated contract killings have surged 108 percent over the past decade, according to a 2024 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Studies show hiring a contract killer can cost as little as $145 in the country all too accustomed to violence.
“It’s easier to silence someone with a bullet than contend with an investigation,” said Chad Thomas, head of private investigation company IRS Forensic.
