Murder for Money trial — testimony recounts loss, lies and a witness killing

Sipho Jolingana was shot and killed in Kariega, Nelson Mandela Bay, on 24 July 2022. In the days that followed, his mother, Mandisa, went to the Kamesh police station to positively identify his body.

Within a week, she returned to the police station with two men, claimed they were distant relatives and asked the detective to help them complete documents for a funeral policy claim.

Suspicion aroused

However, the detective became suspicious when he was suddenly inundated with calls about more policies on Sipho Jongilanga, the same shooting victim.

When he informed Mandisa that these policies would be investigated for possible fraud, she decided to come clean. The men who accompanied her to the station were not family. She in fact did not even know them, but they offered her R20,000 to lie about their relationship.

Those men were allegedly Siyabulela Mbane and Ntobeko Msome – accused number one and two in the ongoing Murder for Money trial in the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court in Gqeberha.

Unfortunately, Mandisa was unable to deliver her testimony before the court earlier this week. This is because Mandisa Jolingana was assassinated in her Kariega home three months ago.

Her affidavits were read into the record by Kamesh detective Ben Michaels, who took her statement in 2022.

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The trial of Mbane, Msome, his wife Xolelwa, and Unathi Peter got under way last month, after their arrest in 2023 for their alleged involvement in one of the first syndicates identified by the police for operating an organised Murder for Money scheme.

According to the charge sheet, they have been linked to nine murders, six of which were linked to 29 fraudulent funeral policies across multiple insurance companies. They allegedly profited by more than R1.7-million from these deaths, while a further R770,000 in claims were repudiated after being flagged for possible irregularities.  

They face additional charges of conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering and money laundering.

This is just one of several cases currently before the court after the police Murder for Money task team (MFM) was established in December 2024, when the police ministry identified insurance-related murders as one of the priority crimes plaguing the Eastern Cape. Nelson Mandela Bay in particular was branded as a hotbed for these greed-driven crimes.

Standing in the witness box earlier this week, Michaels read the statements he took from Jolingana in 2022. 

He testified that she was accompanied by two men, and while he could not remember their faces clearly, he made copies of their ID documents before he assisted them in filling out the necessary forms for them to claim funeral policies on Sipho Jolingana. Those documents belonged to Mbane and Msome.

In the days that followed, a woman visited Michaels’ office and identified herself as Msome’s wife. She brought another set of forms for the detective to complete, but Michaels refused, saying Mandisa was not present to verify the purported relative.

His suspicions grew as more people phoned him about policies on Jolingana’s life, and in September 2022, he contacted Mandisa to tell her there would probably be an investigation.

‘Paid to lie’

That is when she told him that the two men who visited the police station with her were not family. She first met them when they came to her house shortly after her son’s murder. They each promised her R10,000 if she lied to the police and had their claims processed.

She told Michaels she needed the money to help cover her son’s funeral costs, so she agreed. Msome made good on his promise; Mbane did not. According to documents before the court, Msome’s claim was paid, but Mbane’s was repudiated.

In 2024, Michaels facilitated a meeting between Mandisa and Captain Stephen Rheeders, one of the leading MFM investigators. She was to become a State witness in the ongoing trial.

Shot at home

However, she never made it to the witness box. She was shot and killed in her home in Kariega on 26 May 2026.

The defence attorneys for the accused have indicated that they might challenge the admissibility of Mandisa Jolingana’s statements, claiming they could be perceived as hearsay evidence in the absence of her physical testimony.

While Michaels was testifying, Mbane looked at him intently from his seat in the dock. He had a constant smirk on his face, and at one stage began rocking from side to side and bobbing his head as if he were listening to the beat of some unheard song.

Before Michaels’ testimony, acting judge Dan Ngoqo ordered that the public gallery be vacated due to the sensitive nature of the testimony from a family member of another deceased.

Following court proceedings, the witness agreed to share some of his testimony with Daily Maverick on condition of anonymity. 

He explained that his son had been shot and killed in Kwanobuhle in 2022, an incident that rocked their entire family.

‘My only son’

“He was my only son. My wife and I, we are still struggling to cope with it,” the man said outside court, his voice thick with emotion.

Some time passed before he was visited by detectives. They brought a photo album and asked if he could identify any of the people in the images. He claimed to recognise Ntobeko and Xolelwa Msome as he used to work in their garden and cleaned their pool.

“The police asked if they were family, and I told them no, I just worked for them. Then they started telling me about these people having funeral policies on my son, and I was very surprised and confused.

“We were going through hell, and these people were profiting from my only son’s death.

“And now I have to relive all that again here in court. This is not right,” he said, his eyes welling up with tears.

The trial continues today, after which it is expected to be postponed until early 2027. DM