Johannesburg - Police were on Monday searching for former ANC Youth League (ANCYL) official Jacob Lebogo for allegedly shooting and injuring a political ally-turned-enemy Boy Mamabolo at a party in Limpopo on Sunday night.
This morning a police source told The Star that the former Limpopo ANCYL secretary shot the former ANCYL provincial leader in the chest at a Metro FM party in Polokwane.
“The allegations are that the suspect, who is known, shot at Mamabolo,” Limpopo police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said this morning.
Mamabolo was taken to the Polokwane Provincial Hospital on Sunday night where he remained in a serious but stable condition, Mulaudzi said.
Three other people were injured in the shooting: Two were shot in the leg while the third person’s head was grazed.
All three were driven to hospital by their friends.
Mulaudzi said none of these three injuries were serious and all three were discharged on Sunday night.
He said the suspect had not been arrested as of 10am on Monday and urged him to hand himself over to the police.
The police source named the suspect as Lebogo, but Mulaudzi refused to comment on the allegation.
“We cannot name the suspect before he is arrested and taken to court,” said Mulaudzi.
ANCYL national spokesman Bandile Masuku confirmed the incident. “The alleged perpetrator is said to be the former secretary of the province, Lebogo,” he said.
Masuku explained that while the ANCYL’s provincial structures were disbanded last year, both Lebogo and Mamabolo remained members of the ANCYL.
“The law must take its course. We don’t want to get to a point where people with political squabbles get injured,” he said.
Efforts to reach both Mamabolo and Lebogo this morning were unsuccessful.
Mulaudzi said it was “critical” for police to secure and comb Waterland, the park where the event was held in Polokwane, on Sunday night to search for evidence and get statements from all witnesses.
Mulaudzi said the motive behind the shooting was not yet clear, but police believed there was only one gunman and no crossfire.
In January, Mamabolo appeared in the Polokwane Magistrate’s Court on 72 counts of fraud relating to R416 400 he allegedly stole from the Limpopo Geographical Names Committee.
The State alleged that Mamabolo used a separate chequebook to withdraw the funds between September 2010 and last November without the knowledge of other committee members.
Lebogo and Mamabolo once formed part of EFF leader Julius Malema’s inner circle while he was still ANCYL leader.
Malema opened a crimen injuria case against Mamabolo in January, after he apparently threatened to exhume the body of Malema’s late mother, Mahlodi.
A week later, the case was provisionally withdrawn in the Polokwane Magistrate’s Court as police searched for further evidence.
Malema, Lebogo and Mamabolo come from the same neighbourhood in Seshego outside Polokwane.
Mamabolo was Malema’s office manager at Luthuli House when he was president of Congress of SA Students.
But it appears betrayal later pitted the former friends against one another. In January last year Mamabolo claimed Malema had instructed Lebogo and Jossey Buthane to sleep with the mother of Mamabolo’s child.
Malema and his two friends denied the claims.
In an SMS sent to Malema last year, Mamabolo appeared to threaten Lebogo and Buthane with death. “In fact, one of them will die this year. I’ve never said anything I didn’t do,” said Mamabolo.
In the same SMS he vowed to desecrate the grave of Malema’s mother: “This time I want to show you that I am more brutal and exhume Mahlodi from the grave and lay her in front of (your grandmother’s house). You have done many bad things to me.”
Mamabolo led celebrations after Malema was expelled from the ANC, carrying mock coffins he said signified Malema’s political death.
The Star