A firearm linked to the shooting of 22-year-old Sethu Ndamase, a third-year medical student at Walter Sisulu University in March 2025, had been reported stolen by another security company.
This was revealed by university employee Mthuthuzeli Mkhondo, who works as an administrator in access control at the security department at the Nelson Mandela Drive campus in Mthatha.
Ndamase, who is still recovering in hospital, was shot on March 12 allegedly by a senior official of KaMyaluza Security Services, a private company contracted by WSU to man access points at the campus.
The official, identified as Basil Knock, was reported to have been arrested in connection with the incident.
On Wednesday, Mkhondo, giving evidence in an independent commission of inquiry headed by retired Constitutional Court justice Chris Jafta, set up by WSU to probe several shooting incidents at the institution, ,said the firearm had been taken by police who confirmed it had been stolen from the Xhobani Security company.
Meanwhile, the commission was told on Wednesday that Xhobani Security had been contracted by the university previously to provide security at the campus.
Xhobani had been replaced with another private security firm, which in turn was replaced by KaMyaluza.
Prior to joining KaMyaluza, Knock had worked for Xhobani, Mkhondo told the commission.
The firearm had been handed over by Knock to Mkhondo on March 26, about two weeks after Ndamase’s shooting.
Mkhondo claimed Knock had asked for the return of the firearm a week later.
He said he refused to hand it over and instead instructed Knock to contact head of security, Bulelani Xuma.
“I was suspicious that there was something wrong with the firearm given the timing of when it was returned.
“I had never seen a firearm since I joined [access control], I did not know whether it was part of a cache of firearms that had belonged to the university in the past but was not handed over and, secondly, I had heard that a student had been shot outside the gate,” Mkhondo said.
However, asked by lawyer Thabo Mantyi why he did not touch the firearm himself, Mkhondo said he did not have a competency certificate to handle a firearm.
Instead, he had instructed Knock to put it in a safe in their building for safekeeping.
But when Jafta asked if he had recorded the handing over of the firearm to the police later on, he said he had forgotten to make a formal entry into the records.
He also confirmed he had informed three of his superiors, including Xuma and senior campus security Mluleki Mtakati, about the firearm.
You trapped Mr Knock to leave fingerprints on the firearm, that is the reason you did not want to touch the firearm yourself
He claimed the trio had done nothing about the firearm, which prompted him to write emails reminding them later.
“I wanted to have proof hence I wrote them emails as my oral report would not have been sufficient. The email serves as proof that I told them about the firearm.”
Mantyi suggested Mkhondo had refused to touch the weapon himself as he wanted to “trap” Knock .
“My instructions are that you misled Mr Knock as if he was going to test the firearm but not necessarily for returning it.
“You trapped Mr Knock to leave fingerprints on the firearm, that is the reason you did not want to touch the firearm yourself,” Mantyi said.
Cross-examined by the commission’s evidence leader, advocate Bayethe Maswazi, Mtakati, who gave evidence on Wednesday, said he had heard rumours of a pump action gun that had been confiscated from a student while still stationed at the WSU Zamukulungisa campus in Mthatha, where he worked as a supervisor before returning to Nelson Mandela Drive as senior campus security in 2020.
Though he said he had never actually seen the firearm, he claimed the firearm in question was the same weapon linked to Ndamase’s shooting incident on March 12.
Daily Dispatch
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.