Shop owner kidnapped in Eastern Cape found murdered

Eastern Cape police are investigating a case of murder and attempted murder after two Pakistani shop owners were dumped in Cofimvaba on Tuesday morning after being kidnapped more than a week ago.

One of the men was found dead and the other man was rushed to hospital with serious injuries.

Police spokesperson Namhla Mdleleni said that the two men were kidnapped on 29 July from their shop in central Cofimvaba. Both men were dumped in bushes near Magwala junction near the R61 after a ransom of R300,000 was paid. The names of the two men will only be published once all of their relatives have been notified.

Shabbir Gondal, President of Pakistan South Africa Association, told GroundUp that the pair were taken by two gun-wielding assailants while they were closing their shop that night.

Gondal said that while there were four Pakistani men at the shop at the time of the incident, only two of them were taken.

He said they were alerted and went to the police station immediately to report the matter.

“Police told us that the kidnappers will call us and demand money. We must pay them,” said Gondal.

He confirmed that the organisation had been negotiating with the unknown kidnappers since last Tuesday. They originally demanded R5-million but eventually agreed on R300,000.

“We did the negotiations by ourselves because the police made it very clear that there’s nothing they can do to help us. Since the day we were at the police station to report the matter, they never contacted us to ask if the kidnappers had called or not,” said Gondal.

“Those [kidnappers] see us driving big cars and they think we have money. We are paying for these cars every month. They belong to the bank,” he said.

Gondal added that the kidnappers had instructed where to drop the money. The two men were found by a passer-by on Tuesday with their arms and legs still bound and visibly bruised.

When we arrived at the scene on Tuesday, there were no police officers. A small group of immigrant shop owners were standing around the spot where the body of one of the men was still lying. The other man was rushed to Cofimvaba hospital, where he remains for treatment.

Gondal said this is the third kidnapping of a Pakistani national in less than two years and yet there have been no arrests.

The trouble started when a gang went around asking businesses owned by foreign nationals in Cofimvaba to pay a protection fee. They were told to pay between R200 and R2,500 a month.

Foreign national shop owners at the scene say they now live in fear, worried that they could be next.

“We don’t have money. If we had it, we would hire bodyguards to protect us but we can’t afford them. We are selling to survive, and this is a rural town; it does not have many people,” a shop owner told GroundUp.