Durban - The deputy mayor of the uThukela District Municipality, Bheki Mazibuko, had been searching for his two missing bodyguards when he was stabbed to death while running from a group that attacked him outside a tavern.
His close friend Zamlandela Khumalo, who is deputy mayor of the Okhahlamba (Bergville) Municipality, said the incident happened in Loskop, near Winterton, at midnight on Friday.
Mazibuko will be buried on Saturday, after a memorial service on Thursday.
Both Mazibuko and Khumalo were members of the NFP.
Khumalo said Mazibuko had been worried about his bodyguards whom he had sent to collect a sound system earlier in the day for the NFP’s year-end party in Madabeni village.
The bodyguards had gone in a vehicle provided by the district.
Khumalo said Mazibuko was concerned that he could not contact them and drove to Loskop to look for them. He stopped when he saw the vehicle parked outside a tavern. In the tavern he became involved in an argument with a group of men.
“He was stabbed once behind the ear and died at the scene,” he said.
Khumalo said he received a call from a stranger using Mazibuko’s cellphone informing him of the incident.
Khumalo said he and Mazibuko became friends while they were in the IFP, “way before we left it to join the NFP”.
He said the bodyguards still had to explain their disappearance on the day of the incident.
Police spokesman Jay Naicker said two men, aged 25 and 26, had been arrested for the murder.
The Mercury