Pretoria - The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation has referred investigations into allegations against the former Deputy Ambassador to Sudan, Zabantu Ngcobo, to the police.
This follows a report about the alleged involvement of Ngcobo’s partner in a plot to kill an intelligence officer attached to the South African Embassy in Sudan.
According to a report by the Daily Maverick, Ngcobo’s partner allegedly approached the Embassy’s driver, an Eritrean national, to kill the intelligence officer for allegedly sending damaging information about Ngcobo to her bosses in Dirco.
Said Dirco spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele: “As Dirco we are able to confirm that there are allegations against our Deputy Ambassador to Sudan.
“As Dirco we have referred the matter to the South African Police Service for their investigations.
“The police will work with the Sudan authorities on the matter. We will only be able to comment on the matter once the investigations are completed,” Ngqengelele said.
He confirmed that Ngcobo is in the country.
Ngqengelele’s reaction came after damning reports appeared in newspapers in Sudan and in the country that the revelation against Ngcobo emerged after the Eritrean made a confession to the police about the plot following his arrest following the murder of two Sudanese women murdered in Khartoum in December last year.
According to reports, police had earlier thought that the women might have been victims of a satanic ritual killing.
According to reports, one had been dismembered, her body dumped in separate plastic bags outside the city.
The other’s corpse was found wrapped in a shroud on a city rubbish dump.
Then police arrested two local men for the murders and heard an even stranger story. The men claimed they had lured the women into the apartment of South Africa’s deputy ambassador to Sudan and murdered them as a “training” exercise.
The murders were said to be a test to prepare them for their real assignment — to assassinate the intelligence officer at the South African embassy.
Political Bureau