Johannesburg - Police were on Saturday still searching for the suspects in the brutal murder of the son of government spokesman and author Sandile Memela on Saturday.
Wamukelwe Zuma-Memela, 29, owner, chief executive and executive chef at Drizzle and Dazzle, a catering company, and his wife Wendy Campbell, 28, were found dead in their Bryanston home by a relative on Friday morning. They had apparently been murdered around midnight on Thursday.
Campbell worked for Nedbank.
Their hands had been bound behind with cables.
“I think this criminal crowd came to the house in a stolen car. They parked in the garage. They used a window to get into the house. Once inside, they went to the upper floor, where the two were sleeping.
“Apparently a scuffle ensued – Wamukelwe was a feisty character. They injured him on the head with something, causing him to bleed profusely,” Memela told The Sunday Independent on Saturday.
Memela said the killers strangled the couple with electrical wires and made off with household goods.
The couple were found in the morning by Zuma-Memela’s cousin, who lives in an outside room on the property, and works for the murdered couple’s business, which they operated from home.
“His cousin, my sister’s child, went into the house to work in the morning as usual. He thought something was amiss after he tried to switch on the computer but it did not work. He then realised the house appeared to have been ransacked and went upstairs to the couple’s bedroom. That’s when he made the gruesome find,” said Memela.
He said the cousin remembered hearing a commotion and shouting coming from the house during the night but dismissed it as a quarrel between them. “It was brief and ended as soon as it started,” said Memela.
He said his son’s numerous accolades included winning the Peroni cooking competition.
He represented South Africa in competitions in the US and China and ran his own catering company.
He was venturing into multimedia and advertising.
Zuma-Memela was in the process of starting his own cooking school.
“He was highly intelligent, forward-looking and epitomised the type of youth South Africa wants to have – young people who take responsibility for their lives, make a success of their lives and become the source of pride to their families and the nation,” said Memela.
The couple have a 3-year old son. Their Audi A3 was found in Vosloorus on Friday afternoon.
The Sunday Independent