Johannesburg - “Jacob Nare” is a key witness against Radovan Krejcir. His story is an astonishing tale of being dragged into a murky underworld of crime and murder, which he says he wanted no part of.
In one year, he witnessed so many acts of corruption within the police that, when it reached the point at which he wanted to go to the authorities with everything he knew, he was too scared.
Despite this, he became a State witness and was promised by some of the most highly-placed officers in the land that he would be “protected to the end”.
But before he has even set foot inside a courtroom, he has been dropped from an international witness protection programme and gone to a private individual, forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan, for help. His life is in danger once again.
This is Nare's story, in his own words, as told to Angelique Serrao.
I met Siboniso Miya in 2004 and we have been friends since then. We saw each other every day. This whole Krejcir thing started in January 2013 when Siboniso met a man called Phumlani Ncube in Sandton for lunch. At that lunch Phumlani introduced the whole business of being a hit man to Siboniso.
Phumlani said he was looking for a guy who could do a hit “on some white guy in Bedfordview”. To assassinate him. The man they wanted dead was Krejcir.
The people who wanted him dead (a Sandton businessman) were paying very good money, R500 000 for the whole thing.
Apparently at some point they told Krejcir they had been hired to kill him. He promised them better money to take the hit back.
One of the guys in that family was then killed.
Siboniso was open about what he was doing, bragging and always putting Krejcir on speaker phone when he called him.
Siboniso and Phumlani did quite a few jobs for Krejcir, including a project robbing Krugerrands, which led to a misunderstanding between them. Phumlani took some of the Krugerrands. Siboniso told us he wanted to take over the Krejcir matter. Phumlani was No 1 there and Siboniso wanted that position. He wanted to become the “trusted one”.
Eventually it happened when they took out Phumlani.
Phumlani was killed because they found out he was talking to Colonel Ximba. He was giving information to the crime intelligence guys.
They found out from a policewoman in crime intelligence, Nandi, who gave Krejcir information.
Siboniso was already wanted by police at that stage for the Bheki Lukhele case. Every time they set up a search for him, she would tell him about it.
I found out that Phumlani had been killed when a friend of his called me, asking if I knew where Siboniso was. He told me Siboniso had killed Phumlani the day before.
I realised then how dangerous he was.
There were other killings.
The car that was used in the murder of Sam Issa, a white Ford Ranger, is one of the cars Siboniso drove every day. He parked it at my house.
Siboniso was in Durban and he got a call from Nandi saying the police were going to his house, looking for him. He asked another friend to drive the Ranger to my house. This friend took a gun from the car and put it in my bedroom.
The following day, someone broke into my apartment and stole the gun and some of my things. I opened a case of house robbery and I told the police about the gun.
When I told Siboniso about the police report, he almost died. He said if police ever find that gun, they will charge me with a murder.
Siboniso then told me a guy was coming to install Tracker in the car. I came down to check on him and I saw the car flashing. I asked the man what the lights were and he told me he had just installed blue lights in the car, in my basement, where anyone could have seen.
We passed cops and he flashed the lights to the police. They waved at him. Siboniso had everything that made him look like police.
He got the police appointment cards from Durban, bulletproof vests and bullets from a TRT officer girlfriend and the blue lights.
Just before Issa’s murder, Siboniso asked me if I could buy two SIM cards for him. He put them in a small machine and a Samsung S4. The machine was a tracking device that synced the phone. It was supplied to Krejcir by crime intelligence. You put the machine under the petrol tank of a car with a magnet.
It was used to track Issa.
After he (Issa) was killed, Siboniso came to my house. You could see something had happened. I hadn't heard any news yet. He said they had just done a job for the boss and went to sleep.
When I came back around 3pm I heard it in the news. Siboniso said they would never find the Ranger. They had parked it at the house of a cop.
Siboniso and two other men he worked with moved in with me because they were wanted by police. I had a two-bedroom apartment and I was accommodating all of them. I would wake up and go to work, leaving them in the house.
They were taxi bosses, so when I came back their drivers would come and check in the money.
Security guards asked, “who are these guys?”, because men were always coming, giving them money. Up and down. I had a problem with that.
I told Siboniso that I could not live with his friends.
They told Siboniso that “if this boy wasn’t your friend, I would give him an AK47”, meaning they wanted to kill me.
They came back to the house every day carrying bags with their AK47s inside. They said they would never be arrested. Those AKs were for the cops. I kept on thinking that I could get caught in the middle of a shoot-out.
I told another friend about it. I didn't know what to do. These people were very connected. I couldn't just go to a police station and report it.
Krejcir knew the cops. Siboniso would even take certain routes when he drove, simply because he knew that if he was arrested, he knew this was the police station he would be taken to, and Krejcir had people there.
Anything they had to do, they did it in Sandton, in Bedfordview or in Rosebank because that is where Krejcir was connected.
My friend, who really helped me, said he knows a cop in Lenasia who does not take bribes.
It took me about three weeks after our first meeting to tell him everything.
The assassination of Paul (O’Sullivan) and (Colonel) Ximba was coming closer. They were going to use my house as a hide-out after the murder.
That put me under pressure to speak out. I was reporting on people that lived in my house. I knew that at any point, if that information came back to Krejcir, they would kill me like a fly.
I heard the things they had done. These were not normal human beings.
It was so hard to trust this policeman. After speaking to him, I had to go back to those people, sleep in the next bedroom. Every time Siboniso got a phone call from Krejcir, I didn't know if he was telling him what I had done.
So many people are saying to me that I am a sell-out. But I don't know what they would have done in my shoes.
When this whole thing started, I sat down with (deputy police commissioner) General Sithole. He suggested witness protection. But I remembered Lukhele, who was in the witness protection programme, that Siboniso was supposed to kill. He had a map showing where he was.
I said no to Sithole and he agreed and said it would be better I go outside of South Africa. I went to the UK, until General Moonoo brought me back to South Africa and just dropped me.
I asked Sithole and (suspended national commissioner General Riah) Phiyega two years ago, what if I testify and you people just drop me in the street? I would be killed.
They promised me it wouldn’t happen.
They said: “We will protect you until the end.”
THE PLAYERS
* Siboniso Miya is a co-accused in numerous cases with Radovan Krejcir, including the conspiracy to murder Paul O’Sullivan and Colonel Nkosana Ximba, and the murders of Sam Issa and Phumlani Ncube.
* Phumlani Ncube was a debt collector who worked for Krejcir. His bullet-riddled body was found dumped in a field in 2013.
* Colonel Nkosana Ximba is a lead investigator in the Krejcir case.
* Bheki Lukhele is a victim of kidnapping and torture by Krejcir and Miya. His brother, Doctor, had been involved in a drug deal that went wrong.
* Sergeant Nandi Nkosi was a crime intelligence officer who was arrested for passing information to Krejcir in the conspiracy to murder O’Sullivan and Colonel Ximba case
* Lieutenant-General Vinesh Moonoo was the head of detectives. Witness Jacob Nare has accused him of suspiciously dropping him from police protection.
The Star