A lot of people commented that the witness’ contradictions, confusion and straightforward bullshitting warranted him being sent straight to jail – and therein lies a big hint about the history of Vuyo Sipho Aaron Ndzeku.

His is a history so diverse it is impossible to identify which starting point to use. It could be that 1987 affidavit lamenting the loss of a drug supply connection when a Lusaka-based German drug dealer called Lorenz was arrested in Johannesburg.

It could be the time he was serving a prison sentence in 1979 and then escaped – only to be rearrested and turned into an informer for the state. 

It could be a fateful meeting in a flat in Hillbrow on 19 August 1988 where – in a tale worthy of a spy thriller – the convict-turned-informer thought he had converted his handler to be his mule and handed him a stash of drugs – only for that stash to be used to convict him for drug dealing.

It could be the day when – having been convicted for drug dealing in 1992 – Vuyo Ndzeku simply failed to show up in prison because – wait for it – he simply forgot to show up after being sentenced. 

It could be that wonderful, memorable day in January 1995 when – apparently with Adelaide Tambo and Kenneth Kaunda in attendance – the fugitive married the daughter of Soweto businessman Mohale Mahanyele – the current CEO of Naspers, Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa.

It could be the time when he finally got to serve jail time in 2000 for his 1992 conviction, only to be released 83 days later apparently in error – and then taken back to prison and then bizarrely released again weeks later.

But perhaps the most appropriate starting point for telling the fascinating tale of Vuyo Sipho Ndzeku is to start in July 2001 in Kempton Park. Earlier that year, in March 2001, Coleman Andrews – the destroyer-in-chief of SAA, had exited the airline with that famous payout of R200-million. On the ground, Mashudu Ramano was serving as the chairperson of ACSA which was responsible for the security of airports.

The winter of 2001 was a bleak one for airport security. During July, 3 robberies occurred at OR Tambo alone with the robbery on 31 July 2001, the most brazen of them all – or so we thought. In response to the security crisis, Ramano had enlisted the services of an old hand – Paul O’Sullivan – to serve as the head of security for ACSA. Naturally, when O’Sullivan landed, the first question he asked was who was responsible for the security operations at the airport. Enter Khuselani Security.

The company, which was founded in 1996 – was famous more for its illustrious political profile than its ability to secure airports. Its directors were Jerome Ngwenya – now a judge committed to mismanaging the affairs of the Ingonyama Trust; Noel Ngwenya – Jerome’s brother and ex-Denel employee who served as CEO of the company and would later on, be tried by the state for tax fraud; Lungi Sisulu – the second son of Walter and Albertinah Sisulu and husband of South Africa’s ambassador to Washington; and lastly – Vuyo Ndzeku, a convicted drug dealer.

Long before the shenanigans of 2001 initiated the O’Sullivan-Selebi civil war; the directors of Khuselani had a fallout of their own. According to the Ngwenya brothers, the only reason Ndzeku and Sisulu had been invited as directors was simply due to the political connections they presented. Sisulu – as the son of Struggle stalwarts – could apparently unlock opportunities for Khuselani.

Ndzeku was similarly expected to unlock opportunities on the political and social front. After all he was a man married to Phuthi Mahanyele, the daughter of a business icon and the stepdaughter of the Minister of Housing – Sanki Mthembi-Mahanyele, and also once married to Mabotse Maponya and also the father to a child with the elegant actress and TV presenter Sibongile Sokhulu.

The problem is that they simply failed to deliver on these social and political connections.

In addition to the Khuselani business, the other business that Ndzeku was involved in alongside the Ngwenyas was the Swissport business. Jerome Ngwenya served as the chairperson of the Swissport business with Ndzeku as an alternative director. The arrangement however, rapidly fell apart when the Ngwenyas realised that the political and social capital associated with Sisulu and Ndzeku did not materialise.

Jerome Ngwenya then engineered the removal of Ndzeku from the boards of Swissport and Khuselani. This was easy enough to achieve.

Having been comfortable to have Ndzeku as a business partner, Jerome Ngwenya alleges that sometime in 1998 he then discovered that Ndzeku was a convict after all. On the back of that realisation, he says that he advised the Swiss headquarters of Swissport that Ndzeku had been removed from the board of Swissport South Africa on the basis that he was a criminal on the run. But of course it was never going to end there.

Jerome Ngwenya’s brother, Noel Ngwenya’s best friend – Jackie Selebi – decided to issue an instruction for Ndzeku to be arrested in 2000. Selebi alleged that he was horrified to discover that a fugitive was working at a national key point and felt compelled to act. This was the first time that Ndzeku actually served time for his 1992 conviction. That incarceration lasted for just 83 days ending on 10 April 2000.

During that brief period, Khuselani won the ACSA tender worth R99-million. Simultaneously, Ndzeku was finally removed from the Khuselani board and the Swissport board. Interestingly, Jerome Ngwenya himself resigned on the same day for a more noble reason. He had been ‘appointed’ as a judge. He then appointed his daughter – Thandekile Ngwenya – to replace him in these corporate structures.

The consequence of this is that Ndzeku was a director and shareholder at Swissport and Khuselani at the beginning of 2000. But by winter, he had been to prison and emerged having been dispossessed of his interests in both businesses. The Ngwenya’s then had outright control of Khuselani in its most profitable era and Noel actually quit his job at Denel to become the CEO of Khuselani. But Ndzeku still wanted his revenge. And as luck would have it, Paul O’Sullivan happened.

When Paul O’Sullivan resolved to terminate the Khuselani contract, he received support from his boss – Mashudu Ramano. On 29 October 2001, O’Sullivan issued a one-month termination notice to Khuselani.

However, on 1 November 2001 something else happened.

Mashudu Ramano hired Monhla Hlahla as the CEO of ACSA. Once Monhla was the new boss at ACSA, the question of the Khuselani contract ended up in her in-tray. O’Sullivan wanted it cancelled but Khuselani didn’t. The company then went into strategy mode.

As it turned out, Noel Ngwenya had a good friend called Jackie Selebi – who also happened to be an avid shopper and also the head of police in South Africa. Selebi appealed to O’Sullivan not to cancel the contract. O’Sullivan refused. Then Selebi found a way to convince Monhla Hlahla to keep the contract going. But as the termination notice had already been issued, Khuselani approached the courts to seek to overturn O’Sullivan’s decision – and lost. Three days after that happened, the chairman of ACSA – Mashudu Ramano was arrested. The charge – he was suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

Ndzeku saw this as an opportunity to act against the Ngwenyas. As a former director of Khuselani, he had great insights into its dodgy tax affairs – and simply passed on this information to the authorities. The result of that was the arrest of Noel Ngwenya for tax fraud.

Selebi then introduced a new strategy – declaring that the police which were under his control, would now be responsible for airport security. And just before 2001 ended, the most brazen heist occurred at the airport where over R115 million was stolen. Unfortunately, the thieves went on an Instagram type of shopping extravaganza in Zimbabwe and promptly got caught.

In 2002, Monhla Hlahla fired Paul O’Sullivan citing a breakdown in relations. That turn of events led Paul O’Sullivan to the personal crusade against Jackie Selebi that captured the Scorpions, the presidency of Thabo Mbeki and of course – that seminal event that became known as the Polokwane conference of 2007.

But back to the figure of Vuyo Ndzeku.

The collapse in relations between Sisulu, Ndzeku and the Ngwenyas was crystallised by Ndzeku alleging that he was unlawfully removed from Khuselani when his shares and Sisulu’s shares were stolen by Jerome and Noel Ngwenya. Coincidentally, a complaint against Jerome Ngwenya was lodged at the Judicial Service Commission. Ndzeku also reported the tax affairs of Khuselani to the tax authorities which resulted in the arrest of Noel Ngwenya.

That series of events squared the civil war between the Ngwenya faction and the Sisulu-Ndzeku alliance in the Swissport and Khuselani businesses.

With one Ngwenya on the bench and another fighting to stay out of jail and Sisulu in Washington, Ndzeku needed a new game to play.

His patience paid off seven years after he had been removed from the Swissport board, when he made a spectacular return to its board. That return didn’t generate much in the way of excitement until the beginning of 2015, when the remarkably lucky Ndzeku joined the board of a company called JM Aviation.

This company is at the centre of the corruption scandal relating to the aviation sector at the Zondo Commission. This relates to payments made involving SAA Technical, Swissport, JM Aviation, an entity called the ABASA Black Practitioners Forum and the enigmatic Yakhe Kwinana – a former board member of SAA.

Kwinana, an “accomplished” chartered accountant, seems to have suffered from a passion for big paychecks and dabbling in forex trading. To fund her habit, service providers like PwC, Nkonki, Swissport and JM Aviation needed to find a way to make her happy. One such was for a particular audit firm to make irregular payments to her when she actually served as the chair of the audit committee. The part of the fiasco formed part of the testimony of Pule Mothibe of PwC.

The Ndzeku angle was introduced in February when the technical guru of SAA Technical – Nontsasa Memela – tried to explain why Ndzeku had paid her R2.5-million. The story concocted by Ndzeku and Memela, is that the R2.5-million related to land owned by Memela’s mother that she wanted to sell to Ndzeku. The land was apparently the size of two rugby fields located in the Eastern Cape. The problem of course, is that no such land existed and the meeting with the tribal chief who apparently approved the deal, quite simply never happened.

More than that, once Ndzeku had committed to buying the land, Memela’s mother apparently decided the money should go to her daughter anyway and that’s how the R2.5-million earmarked for buying land that did not exist in the Eastern Cape, ended up funding a mansion in Bedfordview that is owned by Memela.

Ndzeku’s great skill however, is his profound inability to remember anything. In order to move the R2.5-million from SAA Technical to Bedfordview – usually a short trip – SAA Technical paid Swissport and JM Aviation. They in turn passed it on to Ndzeku who then moved it onto the Bedfordview property. Ndzeku however, has no recollection of the R2.5-million ending up in his bank account and actually expressed gratitude when it was highlighted to him yesterday that he had indeed received it.

As a director of the company that made the R2.5-million payment, Ndzeku would have taken an interest in the financial affairs of the company; but apparently, he didn’t. It is of course possible that the financial officers at the company simply did this without informing poor Ndzeku, except for one problem.

The only person who could conduct the transaction was a lady called Makhosazane Vuyelwa Sokhulu. Being in charge of the finances of an ‘aviation’ company may not be too complicated for a former flight attendant. But the reason Sokhulu ended up in this position is simply because she happens to be the daughter of the late Sibongile Sokhulu and a gentleman called Vuyo Ndzeku…

That the entire story is a classic illustration of corrupt practices, is patently obvious. The involvement of Ndzeku is unsurprising given his history of losing track of facts and living his life through fiction. Back in 1979, Ndzeku was a prisoner of the state when he found a way to escape. Regrettably for him, he was caught and the warrant officer who executed his rearrest, was simply named Mr Lazarus. As a cunning strategist, Ndzeku presented an irresistible offer to Lazarus. He would turn informer against other drug dealers in order to aid the state fight crime. This worked well until Ndzeku decided to be a dealer himself. To achieve this, he decided to turn his handler into his own mule.

In other words, Lazarus – who was the policeman responsible for handling Ndzeku as an informer – was now being recruited by Ndzeku himself to be a courier. Lazarus pretended to agree, and Ndzeku believed he had a mule in the form of a policeman.

Then in 1987, one of his key dealers, a German named Mr Lorenz and primarily based in Lusaka, was lost to the system when he was arrested in Johannesburg.

The new drug lord – Ibrahim Yusuf – was identified by Ndzeku as a man of interest who was now the main supplier of mandrax on that drug channel. It was this drug that led to the dramatic events of August 1988. Ndzeku managed – in ways only Ndzeku knows – to secure a consignment of 21,000 mandrax tablets (is that what they are called?) that he needed to distribute.

He enlisted Lazarus to courier them and to test them for authenticity (what’s the point of having a policeman on your payroll if they can’t do this?).

Given the size of the expected stash, Lazarus and his team decided that would be the right time to entrap Ndzeku. This would be facilitated through a sting operation involving Lazarus showing up with the drugs, passing them on to Ndzeku, and then alerting the cops to stop Ndzeku’s car. The police then staged the sting at the exchange point which – and you can’t make this up – just happened to be an airport chosen by Ndzeku.

One of the great mysteries of South African crime is what exactly happened at the moment of the sting. Firstly, Lazarus arrived with the drugs to hand over to Ndzeku – all 21 000 of them. To perform the verification process, Ndzeku had handed Lazarus three pills from the 21,000.

Secondly, when the whole package of 21,000 was handed over, Ndzeku moved it to his car. Lazarus then drove off to where the police were waiting to catch Ndzeku red-handed. Remarkably, however, moments after Lazarus had handed over the drugs to Ndzeku and saw him put them in his car, the drugs were nowhere to be found. As a result, the only charge that Ndzeku was convicted for related to the 3 drugs he had handed over for testing and not the 21 000 whose ultimate destination, remains unknown to this day.

It was this conviction that hung over Ndzeku from the moment he was sentenced in 1992. He appealed the decision and whilst the appeal was pending, found love and married Phuthi Mahanyele in January 1995. Then in November 1995, his appeal was dismissed and his sentence of three years confirmed. But Ndzeku was simply too busy to head to prison.

Rather, he started Khuselani with the Ngwenyas and Sisulu in 1996. Then there was the alliance between his other company Zwelibanzi (co-owned with Jerome Ngwenya) and Swissport which created the BEE-compliant Swissport South Africa. It is this company that he was ejected from that set him on a warpath with the Ngwenyas. It is this company that he returned to years later and then ended up with a partnership/venture involving Julian Aires and his daughter Makhosazane Sokhulu. It is this company that ‘partnered’ with JM Aviation in order to get the type of deals that have now entangled Memela, Kwinana and the auditors who saw nothing wrong in all of it.

More fascinatingly however, is the perverse empowerment structure at play here. Remember that Swissport South Africa was empowered when Swissport Switzerland partnered with Zwelibanzi to form Swissport South Africa? Well it turned out that in 2015, the alliance between Swissport SA and JM Aviation was to – wait for it – ensure empowerment.

Problem is that Ndzeku was a director of Swissport and JM Aviation at the same time and hence, used empowered company 1 to empower himself through empowerment company 2. The evidence of Ndzeku made us all laugh. Ndzeku put himself across as a clueless conduit in an elaborate fronting scheme and was almost convincing.

The reality is that he is too wily and too sophisticated to ever be used as a pawn. But we all know that far too many Ndzekus exist in the system. What makes this one unique is that the threat of going to prison doesn’t really faze him. He’s been there, done it, and mastered it.

Ironically, the best way to describe Ndzeku, is to quote Jerome Ngwenya himself.

At the height of their civil war, Ngwenya once said “Had I time on my side, I would have written a short novel about Ndzeku.”

Publishers, get yourselves ready.

And keep in mind that one of these days, Justice Zondo will administer an oath to my favourite chartered accountant – Yakhe Kwinana, it’s about to get lit. Very lit.

But if we had more time to dedicate to Ndzeku, the following questions may eventually be answered.

Why was Mahanyele – the Chairman of National Sorghum Breweries – removed as the chair in July 1997?

What was the true source of the R8.7-million that Deloitte discovered in Mahanyele’s bank accounts prior to his removal?

And who exactly ordered the hit on Mocheku – the whistle-blower in the NSB drama?

And perhaps more crucially what is Tokyo Sexwale’s understanding of how the Swissport saga unfolded when he acquired it in February 2005 until Swissport created a subsidiary called Checkport which turned out to be a Tokyo front company that won a tender to handle security at King Shaka International Airport when Tokyo was a serving Cabinet minister?

Should I carry on?

#AsYouWere

#StateCaptureInquiry

#ZondoCommission DM/MC

Khaya Sithole is an accountant, academic and activist who writes and tweets on finance, economics and politics.