Johannesburg - Johnny Meyer didn’t see the man who was to be responsible for his murder when he left the Absa bank in Randfontein, but a CCTV camera did.
Vusimuzi Mazibuko was not the trigger man that day in 2013 – he was merely a bank spotter who watched the 49-year-old withdraw R12 000 in the bank.
He and Comfort Xolani Mkhwanazi then followed Meyer and his wife to their home, where they robbed the couple at the gate. In the course of a scuffle, Mkhwanazi shot Meyer in the head.
Not long afterwards, on August 13, 2013, Meyer was declared dead.
It would take nearly 10 years for the Meyer family to finally see justice, when the gang responsible for his murder were convicted in a landmark judgment.
This week Mkhwanazi, Mazibuko, Shaun Khumalo, David Sibanyoni, Nkuna Bhova, and Congo Mabunda were in the dock in the Johannesburg High Court waiting to be sentenced.
Meyer’s murder was part of a seven-year crime spree that saw the gang of robbers terrorise communities in three provinces.
Members of the gang were convicted of murder, robbery, assault, and kidnapping.
And for the first time the State was able to get a conviction of racketeering against five of the accused, whom they successfully argued were members of an associated robbery gang.
This conviction came following a trial that began in August 2019 and was built on dogged detective work that involved not only the SAPS, but also investigators from various banks.
By means of identity parades, car chases, lucky breaks and a perfect fingerprint, they were able to finally put the gang behind bars.
To prove their argument that the gang were involved in racketeering, the prosecutors, advocates Geo Wasserman and Cobus Ehlers, had to convince the court that all of the accused had taken part in an enterprise that involved serious crime.
Much of this evidence would come from testimony provided by Absa bank investigator Maureen Coetzee, who was able outline to the court the associated robbers’ modus operandi.
She explained how members of the gang worked together with the sole purpose of sourcing information about where people had withdrawn large amounts of cash from the bank.
Spotters in the bank would observe the withdrawal and, once the victim had left the premises, would alert other members of the gang. The victim would then be followed.
The victim would be robbed of his or her cash, often as they arrived home.
Khumalo, a cash custodian at Absa who alerted the gang to customers who had made large withdrawals, was the only member of the gang not to be convicted on the racketeering charge.
The court case dealt with crimes the gang committed between May 2011 and January 2018.
The first of these crimes occurred in Mabeskraal, in North West, when Mkhwanazi kidnapped post office employee Elizabeth Mosidi from her home.
The prosecutors would explain that the purpose of the kidnapping was to get Mosidi to open the safe at the Mabeskraal post office. Mkhwanazi’s plan failed when he found that Mosidi had only the keys to open the post office, but not ones for the safe itself. Mkhwanazi would also be charged with assaulting Mosidi.
The court also dealt with a series of associated robberies in which members of the gang took part in Klipriver, Vereeniging and Booysens during 2015.
During one of the robberies near Klipriver, husband and wife Jackie and Louise Phele were forced off the road and robbed of the R47 000 they had withdrawn from the bank.
When Louise took the stand as a witness, she told the court that when she looked into Mkhwanazi’s eyes all she saw was murder, and that if it wasn’t for Sibanyoni, he would have killed them both.
Law enforcement experts believe that around 2017 the gang had to find a new area of operation because they were feeling the heat in Johannesburg, because of successful efforts that were being made to halt such robberies in the city. Three members of the gang – Mkhwanazi, Bhova and Mabunda – then began targeting the Giyani area in north-eastern Limpopo.
The area proved attractive because of lax security and the high number of pensioners there, many of whom were in the habit of withdrawing large amounts of cash to pay for their retirement homes.
The gang hit the community hard and were particularly ruthless. In some instances, they followed their victims home from the bank and broke down their front doors and robbed them in their houses.
In one instance, Mabunda held a knife to a woman’s throat after she had brought beer and food for a lobolo celebration. The gang’s violent crime spree across Giyani resulted in the police forming a special task team to apprehend them.
But it was to be the work of law enforcement across those three provinces that resulted in the downfall of the gang. First came the breakthrough in the Meyer murder.
Coetzee told the court that she had been tasked with tracking down the suspects in his killing. She couldn’t identify the spotter caught on CCTV, so she distributed his image to other investigators. After a couple of weeks, she got a hit.
An investigator working for British American Tobacco recognised the spotter as Mazibuko, whom they had linked to a number of truck hijackings.
But the problem was that Mazibuko and Mkhwanazi were able to secure bail and continue their crime spree.
Mkhwanazi’s luck finally ran out on January 6, 2018 when he, Bhova and Mabunda robbed Mopani Superspar employee John Ngobeni Risimati.
Risimati had collected R20 000 worth of change for the supermarket that is situated in the Giyani area. During the robbery, a shot was fired that drew the attention of police who were patrolling nearby.
They gave chase and cornered and arrested Mkhwanazi and Mabunda.
The following day, a blue car that was also involved in the robbery was spotted and police were able to arrest Bhova, after a chase and shoot-out that left a patrol van with a bullet hole in it.
After the arrests of the three, the spate of violent robberies that were plaguing the Giyani area suddenly stopped.
Khumalo, the Absa bank employee and Sibanyoni were also picked up.
With the gang behind bars, investigators now had the task of building cases against the six.
This the court heard was to prove challenging.
Many of the witnesses of the gang’s crimes were too afraid to come forward and identify them. Detectives got around this by creating a virtual line-up by pasting photographs of the suspects on the walls of the police station, so that witnesses didn’t need to physically see them.
A further boost to the investigation occurred when SAPS fingerprint experts were able to lift a fingerprint from a security gate at the Mabekraal post office.
The print revealed a rare feature. It was described as a crossover bifurcation that was only seen again when the expert examined Mkhwanazi’s fingerprints.
By 2019, there was enough evidence to go to trial, with all the cases across the three provinces centralised and to be heard in the Johannesburg High Court.
Nearly three years later, the case is drawing to a close, with the six appearing in court again on March 22, this time for submissions in mitigation of sentence.