Police Minister Bheki Cele is accused of pressuring police in Mpumalanga to link EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu to the murder of Hillary Gardee in order to settle a personal score with the red beret leader. The fight between Cele and Shivambu started in November 2018, when the EFF leader filed an official complaint with former police commissioner General Khehla Sitole. He said that he had found out about a plan by a senior ANC leader to kill him and that hit men from Kwazulu-Natal had been sent to Johannesburg to kill him.
The hit on Shivambu was found out when the hit men found him sitting with one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s advisers, who is known to this newspaper. They didn’t shoot him because they didn’t want to start a political storm. “One of the hit men is said to have told the adviser not to meet with Floyd for the next few days because they were in Joburg to kill Shivambu, and it was the adviser who told Shivambu about the planned hit,” a source who knows the case well but did not want to be named yesterday said.
The Sunday Independent saw a letter Shivambu sent to Sitole on November 29, 2018. In it, he said, “I am writing to tell you that I have been told of a threat to your life. I’ve heard from reliable sources that hitmen were hired to kill me and have been following me for a while, mostly when I’m in Johannesburg. Shivambu also said that if it came to it, he could set up for “police or investigators to meet with the people who told me my life was in danger.”
Shivambu says that his coworkers told him that they had told Cele “about the threat, but he hasn’t come back to us.” On November 30, 2018, the police confirmed that Shivambu’s complaint had been received and said they would look into it. Shivambu also made the same claims during this year’s State of the Nation address in Parliament. He said, “There are ministers who hired inkabi to kill Members of Parliament who are about to expose them for corruption.”
Shivambu has said that Cele was either involved in the plan to kill him or was looking out for the minister who hired the people who killed him. Yesterday, Shivambu said that Cele and the ANC were trying to use Gardee’s murder “to fight political battles and to make people doubt the EFF’s leadership.” Gardee is the daughter of Godrich Gardee, who used to be the head of the EFF. On April 29, she was taken from her home in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, raped, and then killed. On May 3, her body was found in a plantation about 60 km from Nelspruit.
Philemon Lukhele, one of the three men accused of killing Gardee, gave an affidavit to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in which he said he was tortured and forced to say Shivambu was responsible for Gardee’s death.
It’s no secret that Shivambu knows Lukhele, who is from eSwatini but is now living in South Africa. He met and became friends with Lukhele while they were both students at Wits University. Shivambu also had something to do with Lukhele becoming Wits SRC president in 2003, and the EFF leader was also chosen as SRC president the next year.
In his affidavit to the directorate, Lukhele says that he told police that he couldn’t say anything bad about Shivambu because he hadn’t talked to him in five years. When asked about Lukhele’s claims, Shivambu said yesterday, “The ANC is using the very sensitive issue of femicide and violence against women to fight political battles and try to make people doubt the leadership of the EFF.” We are not criminals, have never been criminals, and never will be criminals.
“ANC criminals are not like us, and we will never be like them. We will find out who is behind this crazy plot, and we know that a minister is involved because we will show that he hired Inkabi and is involved in a lot of corruption. On Friday, six questions were sent to Cele, but he didn’t answer any of them. Yesterday, Lirhandzu Themba, who works for him, said, “Minister Cele has nothing to say about this.”
Lukhele was arrested along with Sipho Mkhatshwa, who was reportedly born in eSwatini but raised by a family in South Africa, and Albert Gama, who is said to be from eSwatini and live in South Africa without papers. Mkhatshwa went to a sangoma to get cleansed, but he didn’t pay for the services, so the other two people were arrested. Police sources say that Mkhatshwa offered to pay for the service with one of his fiancee’s albino children from her previous marriage. The sangoma, on the other hand, said he wanted money
When Mkhatshwa didn’t pay, the sangoma is said to have told the police. Mkhatshwa also gave the directorate an affidavit in which he said he had been tortured. Brigadier Selvy Mohlala, a spokesman for the SAPS in Mpumalanga, said that the men were not tortured. This week, Lukhele was moved to a correctional center in Barberton, outside of Nelspruit. In his prison cell, a cell phone was found. Lukhele has been using the phone for almost two weeks, according to reports.