‘I’m a hustler, but I didn’t steal the president’s cash’

One of the Namibian men accused of stealing $4m (about R60m) from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm has admitted he is a criminal who smuggles gold and dollars between Namibia, Angola and SA.

But he is adamant he had nothing to do with the February 2020 burglary at Ramaphosa’s Limpopo property.

Errki Shikongo and Urbanus Shaumbwako, Petrus Muhekeni, Imanuwela David and Petrus Afrikaner were named by former spy boss Arthur Fraser as the perpetrators of the heist. 

Fraser deposed an affidavit on June 1 in which he alleged the men had conspired with a domestic worker at the main farmhouse to steal the money, which was hidden in a couch.

“That gold, I bring it this side and I sell it here in Cape Town,” Shikongo told the Sunday Times from Upington this week. “That’s where I get that money. If you want to exchange dollars in Angola, they will sell you dollars. There’s a place where you can exchange for dollars. But how come now they are now saying we are stealing the president’s money?"

Shikongo, who said he was in the Northern Cape to visit a friend, said he knew all the others named by Fraser but not Afrikaner. He described a network of people involved in a plethora of crimes.

He said he made R2m from a gold-smuggling operation between a mine in Angola and Cape Town in early 2020, when he traded the gold with an Angolan living in the affluent Atlantic seaboard suburb of Camps Bay.

“There is a gold mine in Angola, so we went there and we bought gold.  Even now we still go there, I wanted to go there [now].”

He said the mine was called “Lunda”.  An online search yielded no results. However, there are formal and informal gold mining operations in both Lunda Sul and Lunda Norte provinces in Angola.

Asked why he was named in the affidavit, he said: “Maybe because they saw [money] in my account and the houses I bought, that’s why they put my name there. I don’t know.” 

According to Fraser’s affidavit, in mid- February 2020  Shikongo transferred R715,000 to a Cape Town car dealership and registered a VW Golf GTI in his name three days later.

Deed records show he bought a R1.7m flat in Blouberg, Cape Town, in March last year, and a R300,000 property in Wallacedene, Kraaifontein, in July 2020.

“Actually I’m a businessman and I used to sell cars also,” Shikongo, 42, said. “Before I bought those places, I had another place. So I don’t know how can they come and say, how did I manage to afford those houses, when I already had another property.”

Actually I’m a businessman and I used to sell cars also

—  Errki Shikongo

However, a deeds search shows that Shikongo owned no properties before the burglary.

The Sunday Times visited both premises this week. At his Wallacedene property he has built a double-storey block of flats, which tenants told the Sunday Times they rent for R1,500 a month. There are 15 flats in the building.

Shikongo said he had lived in Gqeberha and the Western Cape since he moved to SA from Namibia in 2006, after finishing school.

He said Muhekeni is his brother, that he had met David in Cape Town and that he had lived with Shaumbwako in a flat in Table View until Shaumbwako was arrested in October 2020 when he sped away from a traffic police roadblock in Cape Town. 

The car he was driving was seized, along with a bag containing 12 firearms. The car, a VW Polo, was registered in Shikongo’s name.

During the bail application, prosecutors said some of the firearms —  whose serial numbers had been filed off — had been identified as Namibian police property.

Shaumbwako lost his bail application and has been in custody ever since. NPA spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said that the trial was expected to start next month. 

Sources close to the investigation said evidence found on Shaumbwako's phone suggested he was also involved in gold smuggling.

Shikongo, who according to police sources was arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm in Gqeberha in 2020, told the Sunday Times he was in Namibia when Shaumbwako was arrested with  his car. 

 “The lawyer said that the police officer was asking about me because the flat where we were staying [in Table View] was in my name.”

Underworld sources this week told the Sunday Times that David had also spoken about his involvement in cross-border gold and diamond smuggling. They said he had fled to Cape Town from Johannesburg because criminals there had been trying to retrieve the Phala Phala loot from him.

They claimed David had openly spoken about the theft and having received an $800,000 cut for his part.

However, Shikongo said that he had never heard the claims before the news broke last week. “That story, of David, I saw it and I tried to call him but the calls are not going through, his number is off,” he said.

Shikongo described how the Angolan gold trader in Camps Bay and another man had given him the idea to get into smuggling. 

“We met guys in Cape Town, the one is Angolan, the other is Congolese, they told me about this,”  he said. “When you buy it in Angola, the currency is very low, then there is a place [in Cape Town] where you can exchange the gold with the Chinese for dollars.”

Muhekeni, an Uber and Bolt driver who spoke to the Sunday Times from Namibia via a WhatsApp call, this week also denied any involvement in the Phala Phala burglary.

He said he had never been questioned by police about it. “That is a rubbish story and the person who says this is a liar. No-one in the police has spoken to me about this [burglary]. All I am seeing is my name and picture in the newspaper and the internet, but no-one is speaking to me.”

Muhekeni said he was living on government social grants in Namibia, recovering from a broken neck that he suffered when he fell off the roof of his house.

“When I come back to South Africa, where I have lived since February 2002, I will go to the police. I want them to explain to me why my name is being mentioned in all of this. No-one has asked me about this.

It makes me very worried. My name is dead because of something that I did not do

“It makes me very worried. My name is dead because of something that I did not do. I was not in Limpopo in February 2020. I was in Cape Town driving my Uber vehicle, which other people now drive for me because of my injury.”

Muhekeni described Shikongo as his “cousin and brother”, who he knew from childhood. He said he also knew the others named by Fraser.

“My name has been involved in this because of my driver’s licence. I lent it to Errki. He wanted to buy a car. He didn’t have a licence and needed one to buy a car. He was buying a Ford Ranger bakkie. 

“The garage [motor dealership] in Cape Town would not allow him to buy the car without a licence.  It was the same with the insurance. He put the car in my name with my licence.”

Attempts to reach David were unsuccessful, with calls unanswered. Contact numbers for Afrikaner could not be found

Phala Phala manager Hendrik von Wielligh said the domestic worker — named in an amaBhungane story last week simply as Floriana — was never in the employ of the game farm.

“It is only through the media that I recently learnt that a domestic worker was involved.  When I began to investigate I discovered that she was not in our service, employment or on our payroll.”

Hawks spokesperson Brig Thandi Mbambo said officers from the Serious Corruption Investigation Unit had received the docket and were investigating charges of corruption and money laundering.