ALI MPHAKI
WHEN the Masekwameng family in Central Western Jabavu sit down to enjoy their Christmas lunch on Sunday, there will be one chair standing empty at their table.
It belongs to their father, Obed “Cosmos” Masekwameng, shot dead in a hijacking outside a friend’s place in Dube in December 2003. The thugs managed to drive away in his vehicle, which has never been found.
Masekwameng’s widow, Chriselda, says that each year when the calendar reaches December, she curses. She remembers that every December her husband would take the family away for the holidays.
What is breaking her heart is that eight years later, her husband’s killers are still at large. The question nagging her and her two sons is “Who killed Cosmos and why?”
Initially she had faith in the police, but now they appear unable to find the killers, and she is left feeling “confused, bitter and angry”.
“How can someone be killed and nothing happens? Somebody somewhere knows the truth. We never thought it would take the police so long to find his killers. The matter has dragged for too long and we are struggling to find closure.
“It’s like there is an albatross hanging around our necks. We can’t take it anymore.”
Confusing Chriselda is that at one stage the investigating officer told her that Cosmos’s cellphone, in the car when he was hijacked, had been found and three young men arrested.
“We had hoped that the three would be able to lead the police to his killers. But we were shocked to learn that they were released as a result of ‘insufficient evidence’.
“How can they talk of insufficient evidence when they were able to trace his cellphone and arrest the people found in possession of his cellphone? Clearly there is something fishy about this case,” Chriselda said.
And when, from time to time, she enquired about progress on the case, she claims the police would give her the run-around. She is tired of the unfulfilled promises from the investigation officer, known to her only as Warrant Officer Ditlhage.
“For instance, the police would tell me that the case was not reported at the Orlando police station but at Meadowlands. When I enquire there, they would send me back to Orlando. This goes to show that somebody does not know what they are doing. It is so frustrating. It is so painful because we are talking about the murder of my husband and father of my children.”
Chriselda intends approaching the Independent Complaints Directorate to ask them to investigate what she terms the “sloppy” investigation of her husband's death.
“I will not rest until the killers of my husband are found. They may have gotten away with murder for now, but I can assure them it won’t be long,” she warned.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said they sympathised with Chriselda but that the case was closed because of insufficient evidence. Once there was new evidence, the police would readily reopen the case.