at the scene. The first emergency responders and police cars arrived not
long thereafter, probably at about 12 p.m.
Tshepo watched as that part of Bowling Avenue became busier and
busier. By 12 : 05 , some of the police officers and paramedics on site
had removed the driver’s body from the car.
The body of Phikolomzi Ignatius ‘Igo’ Mpambani, who was thirty-
seven at the time of his violent death on Tuesday 20 June 2017 , was
placed on the traffic island next to the Bentley and covered with a silver
first-aid blanket.
Tshepo would not have been aware of this, but the first responders
found a soft cooler bag bearing the logo of a major supermarket chain
in the footwell of the front passenger seat. Dark blue, it had the word
‘goodness’ printed on one side. It was stuffed, not with fresh groceries,
but with several stacks of banknotes held together with elastic bands. A
quick glance at the cash would have been enough to realise that it was
a lot of money. In fact, the cooler bag contained just R 100 shy of half a
million rand.
There was another R 500 000 in the boot. This second stash was also
made up of several bundles of banknotes, but instead of being stuffed
in a cooler bag, this money simply lay loose among some documents
and a briefcase.
When Tshepo later heard about the R 1 million that had been found in
the car, he was by no means surprised that the gunmen had left behind
all of that money. The young men who shot Mpambani weren’t there to
steal something, Tshepo would tell people in the days and weeks after
the murder. They were the type of men who got paid to kill someone.
As the months went by, Mpambani’s death featured less and less in
conversations among the community of beggars and job-seekers at
nora
(Nora)
#1