The people of Clermont – a lively and bustling Durban township to some, a gansters’ den to others – reckoned Vuyani “Vivi” Mthembu would not see in 2011 and his second child being born. Mthembu was on the run from police, wanted for a series of hijackings he had committed alongside his childhood partner in crime, SpheleleShezi, 19 – his accomplice in the William Hammond murder.Strangely, while on the run from the police, Mthembu was in touch with correctional services’s parole officers who were monitoring his conduct after his early release on parole for the Hammond murder.
For weeks on end, Mthembu and Shezi managed to evade justice before they were finally shot dead by the police on January 6 this year.
When the Roving Reporters visited the family’s small family home in Hammarsdale, a picture of Vivi hung alongside a picture of his dead father, Dumisane.
It was at this home that Vivi was born on December 9, 1987. It was a time of escalating political violence as supporters of the United Democratic Front, the internal wing of the then banned African National Congress (ANC) tried to oust from Hammarsdale supporters of Inkatha (now the Inkatha Freedom Party) and vice versa.
With schooling badly affected, the Mthembus moved to Clermont.
Thulani, now 40, the eldest son of the family, has fond memories of those days.
In interviews, he recalled Vivi, then a toddler, falling down a small flight of stairs, picking himself up at the bottom, and then declaring: “I almost fell.’
He also talked of a day when Vivi, still a toddler, wanted to help around the house with cooking. Vivi took hold of an almost red-hot handle of a gas cylinder, soon screaming from the burning pain.
“I was telling him: ‘Ay, move your hand ‘mfowethu. But he didn’t. For weeks on end he would show off the burn marks, laughing. He was a very, very happy child,” said Thulani.
Thulani said there no traumatic incidents he could remember from their brother’s childhood.
Then their younger cousin from Pietermaritzburg, Sphelele Shezi, moved in with the family to attend school in Clermont.
Sphelele, said Thulani became his brother’s “number one companion”.
He said the pair got up to a lot mischief, as any normal growing boys do.
But at school, the mischief started taking on a dark side, the two boys becoming knife wielding nuisances.
“Once, when Vivi was in Standard 6 (Grade 8) I took his knife out of his shorts pocket and kept quiet. After that he used to hide it away from us, but he would still turn up with a knife at school,” said Thulani.
Then came the day that Thulani still refers to as “that accident with the white boy” – the murder of William Hammond.
In retrospect, the killing of William was clearly a murder waiting to happen.
Although Mthembu family members did not speak openly about it, they did not deny that their father, Dumisane Mbikwane, was a convicted car thief, his life also complicated by having sired 39 (acknowledged) children from a string of lovers and common-law wives.
In Mbikwane’s world, to eat was to steal and for two young boys growing up under his care, robbing whites kids of bikes was a stepping stone into this world; murder a qualification that earned respect.
Vivi’s sister, Vuyisile, 22, recalled the reaction to the Hammond murder.
“At first no one believed Vivi had done it. No one thought he would do such a thing,” said Vuyisile. But in the criminal underworld of Clermont the two youngsters had earned “respect”. As the trial magistrate, KQ Hadebe, would later remark, the two accused had paraded around court as if they had committed a herioic deed.
They say that justice delayed, is justice denied. The William Hammond murder case was no exception. It took four years, and four different prosecutors presenting the state’s case, before the court was finally able to pronounce a guilty verdict in October 2006.
By this time, Vivi’s mother, Nelisiwe Mthembu, a domestic servant, had died of cancer.
Then, while Vivi was in his prison, his father was murdered outside a Nice and Easy tavern in Clermont’s 23rd Street where the Mthembu home is now a communal home of sorts.
Let out of prison to attend the funeral, Vivi impressed those who gathered to pay their last respects.
“He read out a letter beside his father’s coffin,” said Vivi’s aunt, Sibongile Mbikwane. “As I saw it, he was a changed person, who had matured and also accepted Christ, so I do not know what went wrong after he came out.”
“Yes, the odd thing is,” said Thulani, “that whenever we visited him in jail, Vivi always told us: ‘Ay guys, don’t do crime, bra. In jail there is nothing for you. Your life stops in jail. Jail gets you to do things you never thought you would’.”
Thulani said his brother had earned respect among inmates.
“Everyone would greeted him ‘Mhlonishwa! Mhlonishwa!’” he said.
Literally, Mhlonishwa means, “sir” but in township gangster culture, it’s also a title that goes with the swag of carrying knives, going to prison, driving stolen cars.
Thulani said for the first weeks after he had been released, his brother had stayed at home, abiding by his parole conditions.
“Vivi was always asking me for money. I would give him some to go and buy food when I was not there,” he said.
“Then one day Vivi came home with a black bakkie. I asked him where he got it. He said he stole it. Then I saw the keys in the ignition. I moved away, saying he could not have just stolen it. That’s when he admitted to hijacking somebody,” said Thulani.
Thulani said he had once asked his brother to hand himself over to the police at the request of an investigating officer, Sergeant Lindani Mhlongo, also known as Venter.
“They met at the station commissioner’s office in Pinetown. I don’t know what was discussed, but Vivi wasn’t arrested. I think he was warned that there were cases against him,” said Thulani.
But this did not deter Vivi who was soon driving around the streets of Clermont in hijacked cars.
“Everyone, everywhere was talking and posting messages on Mxit, saying: ‘What does he think he is? Vivi is going to die soon!’ The police were now hunting him. People were saying Vivi was on a list.”
Thulani said when he asked his brother about all this, and carrying a gun, an argument would ensue. Vivi, he said, would say: “Bra, stop it. I will leave now, because you are trying to lecture me‟.
Thulani said he had once arrived home to find the place had been raided and ransacked by the police.
“The police had broken the door down to get in. They had gone through everything, leaving the place a mess and two television sets broken,” said Thulani.
He said on another occasion – after the shooting of a neighbour, Delisiwe Ngubane, 52 – the police had swarmed into his house, immediately handcuffing him.
“They dragged me about the place assaulting me. One of them was saying ‘You’ll see what will happen to you now’. I thought I was going to die. It was actually Venter (Mhlongo) who saved me,” said Thulani.
Mhlongo confirmed this: “They actually mistook Thulani for Vivi. Everyone was calling me, saying, ‘We’ve got Vivi! We’ve got Vivi! Come, come, come!’ but the informer had already told me he was not there.”
“I drove there, slowly. When I got there, I said: ‘No fuck, forget it man, take the handcuffs off. This man is not Vivi.’ ”
Thulani said after the shooting at the Ngubane home, Vivi had seldom spent more than five minutes at home.
“He would sometimes come by and give me maybe about R100 and tell me to buy food,” said Thulani. “I would ask him where he was going, he would say, ‘Ay bru, don’t worry about that. I will see you when I come back’.”
Then came the day Vivi didn’t come back – January 6.
“We had slept over at my girlfriend’s place,” said Thulani. “It was about 8.30am that he left. I could see something was bothering him. I asked him: ‘What’s wrong? Where you going?’
Again his brother said: “Ay bru, don’t worry. I will call you.”
“Later, around 12, I got a call from friends. Venter (Mhlongo) had called them, asking them to tell me that Vivi and Sphelele were dead, that I need to come and identify their bodies.”
“When I arrived, they were on the ground, in the dirt, not in the car. Sphelele had all these parts of his face missing, and half of his mouth, torn off.
“Vivi was lying like he was sleeping. He had a hole in the back of his neck, and on top of his head.”
“I met Venter there. He said: ‘They didn’t want to surrender, bra’.”
I told him: “Bra, it’s done. What has happened is finished. Everybody has been talking about it for a long time’.”