It’s Sunday, 11 November 2012, when three people stroll into the Pretoria Art Museum on Wessels street in Pretoria, and stroll out again with six of South Africa’s most historic and valuable art works. Two days later, four of those pieces would be discovered in the most unlikely place… Thanks to my interviewees from Stephan Welz &...

August 30th 2019 was a regular day for Leighandre Jegels and her mom Ryta. The two were making their way to a boxing gym in East London, when a car started driving erratically behind them. In it was Bulelani Manyakama, Leighandre's abusive ex-boyfriend... Domestic abuse...

It became known as the case of the body in the boot, abandoned in the parking lot of Montecasino, but there's a man behind that headline. In the wake of his wife's unexpected death, Dustan Blom meets exotic dancer Maruschka Robinson. He takes pity on her, offers her a lifeline, but Maruschka responds by taking advantage and - ultimately - his...

It’s February 21st, 2018, just after midnight, when three vehicles pull up outside the Ngcobo police station. One of them is a police van, but the gunmen that climb out are anything but police. They head into the station and gunfire shatters the quiet calm of a small village police station. As the new day dawned on the village of Ngcobo, six people have been fatally shot… and a standoff with the Mancoba Seven Angels Ministry is shaping...

This is the first episode of It Happened Here for 2022. In the spirit of the new year, I’m declaring this the start of a new season. Yes, the numbering won’t make tonnes of sense, but neither does much in life so we’re just going to run with it. This episode covers the plot to murder one of South Africa's most lauded musical talents, Taliep Petersen - a plot cooked up by his own wife, Najwa. Please consider supporting The District Six...

In January 2018, near New Hanover, a small burning patch of sugar cane caught the attention of a farmer out walking with his grandson. As he got closer, he realized that there was more to the fire. There were drag marks in the soil, the smell of petrol, and just a foot or into the field was a horrific sight, a charred body of a woman, one arm lifted up over her head – in what her mom will later describe as the dying swan pose. One hand remained untouched by the fire, her fingertips still...

The subject of today’s episode is Nkululeko Habedi – also known by his musical persona or nickname “Flabba.” Flabba’s case attracted a lot of media attention, because he was already famous as a member of the South African hip-hop collective Skwatta Kamp, and for his work as a solo artist. On the evening of March 8 2015, Flabba, his girlfriend Sindi and some of their friends, are all set for a night out at one of Joburg’s swankiest spots – The Sands, in Sandton. But the night would end in his...

It’s the 2nd of March 2011 and, on the side of the road a middle-aged couple kneel in the sand, weeping. In front of them is a board hammered into the sand, a photograph of a young woman attached. Meters away reporters jostle to try and get a better shot. This ceremony is part of an ongoing story that has captured international headlines. The couple, Nilam and Vinod Hindocha, have come to grieve their beloved daughter, Anni Dewani - and to get to answers. Was Anni the random victim of a...

IHHers, today’s case is an interesting one. Firstly, Phindile Joseph Ntshongwana was not an anonymous guy before these crimes put him in the papers. In fact, he used to be a professional rugby player –and you know how South Africans feel about their rugby. The other reason this case got so much attention was that Phindile is a literal axe murderer who went on a week-long rampage in March 2011, murdering four people and attempting to kill at least two others. But there’s a lot more to this...

While my current investigation/research is taking a bit longer than normal, here's an interview I did with Yonela Sinqu, the communications officer at Sisonke, the National Sex Workers Movement in South Africa. We talk about why they advocate for decriminalisation (rather than legalisation), as well as getting into some of the discrimination and violence sex workers face. A study by the South African Media Research Council recently found that 71% of women sex workers said they had been...

Zephany was born on 28 April 1997, in Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town. She’d been born via C-section, and so her mom was still recuperating in the ward a few days later. And it was while mom Celeste lay there, in and out of an exhausted, post-operative sleep with her little girl resting by her side that the unthinkable happened. On April 30th, someone entered that room, dressed in the maroon trousers and oatmeal shirt of the Groote Schuur staff uniform, and took Zephany from her crib...

The President Hotel in Bantry Bay is a long way from the sweet and simple townhouses we’ve been lurking in recently. It has some 350 rooms and apartments, with tall palm trees positioned around a pool and the exterior painted in startling white just to lean into that Med look. On the 7th of June 2009, security guard Mark Benjamin is standing outside room 54 key in hand, with two others chomping at the bit to get inside. These men are Lester Penteni and Marshall Gobinca. The men had gone to...

Today we’re traveling to Gqeberha on the south east coast of South Africa, the perfect spot for a young couple like the Panayiotous. Jayde Panayiotou worked as a teacher and her husband Christopher was an entrepreneur. On April 21 2015, Cherise Swanepoel pulled up to the Stellen Glen townhouse complex as always to carpool with Jayde to work, but there was no sign of her, no answer on her phone either. Jayde was the victim of an abduction and by 10am the whole country would be sharing her...

Back in 2005 the Shiraz complex in Stellenbosch had just been completed and the first set of tenants moved in, including 22-year-old student Inge Lotz. Inge was whip-smart, studying mathematics and stats at the University of Stellenbosch. She was a dedicated student who liked to stick to a schedule for her academic work, so when she wasn’t answering her phone on the night of 16 March 2005, her mom assumed she was head down in a book. Inge’s boyfriend Fred van der Vyver, however, was not as...

Yes, I know that is a truly awful joke. I’m not even sorry though.  In this definitely-not-a-third-part episode, I want to pull a few loose threads that I simply couldn’t when I was putting together the larger narrative of the Station Strangler case and Norman...

This is part two of the Station Strangler. If you haven’t listened to part one, start there. Last week we covered a series of murders, from 1986 to 1992, and I told you about ten young boys who were raped and strangled before being dumped in various sites near the train stations and in the sand dunes of Mitchell’s Plain and surrounds.    In early 1994, there had been a gap of over two years since the disappearance of any young boys had been definitively linked to the so-called Station...

I’m just jumping into your new episode feeds with a mini update. This refers to episode five – the killing of Susan Rohde in 2016, for which her husband Jason Rohde was convicted in late 2018. Jason was found guilty by Judge Salie-Hlope in the Western Cape High Court. Now, on 16 August 2021, Jason has appealed this ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal, the second highest court in South Africa. Here's a quick summary of the defence claims. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy...

The case of the Station Strangler unfolds at a critical and tense juncture of South African history. The majority of events here take place between 1986 and 1995, the last few years of apartheid. In fact, eleven victims bodies are found just weeks before our first democratic election in 1994. Only one man has ever been convicted of any crime associated with this spate of murders, although there is a lot of speculation that he wasn’t the only perpetrator. So many social, personal and political...

This is part two of the Krugersdorp cult killings. At the centre of this is a woman called Cecilia Steyn who has created this epic backstory for herself, in which she is a former Satanist, a ritualistic abuse survivor, who wants to transform her life and walk with christ. So far she’s convinced Ria Grunewald and Ria’s prayer group turned sect Overcomers through Christ that for the church of satan, she’s the one who got away. And then she's turned a small breakaway group against Ria, and...

This is the story of eleven murders and six accused murderers. There are multiple methods of killing, multiple disposal MOs, a period of almost a decade from the first slayings to the sentencing, and many locations. You will meet some of the strangest characters, and hear bizarre, meandering stories of events and reasoning built on a flimsy pretext of belief, but this is also the story of a small group of friends, in a small town, a teacher, a school girl, her brother. On paper, at least at a...

It’s Monday morning August 18th, 2008 at a school in Krugersdorp. The bell has just rung for morning assembly so all the students are making their way towards the hall in groups, chatting among themselves.  Two 16-yo boys Jacques Pretorius and his friend JC are walking in together when the unthinkable happens. They didn’t have any real warning. Some kids in the vicinity said they heard someone say “Want to see something cool?” just before that someone swung a sword at Jacques, catching him at...

Vlakfontein is the kind of place where you know your neighbours by name and by sight. But in October of 2018, no one had seen the Khoza family from 4192 Ibis Crescent for a few days.  There are quite a few people who call this property home. Mbali Khoza is the homeowner, and she lives here with a long-term boyfriend Fita Khupe and her sister Dudu Khoza. Dudu’s kids – Nomfundo, Luyanda and Sbongakonke – also lived there, and Nomfundo herself had two kids, Karabo and Nkanyiso.  It is very...

It’s 2016, July 24th, and the receptionist on duty of Spier Hotel has just taken a call from a guest in need of a maintenance man. Spier is a four-star hotel, positioned on one of the country’s oldest wine farms. Maintenance work Desmond Daniels responds to the call, and at this moment, of the lock turning, two versions of the story splinter off. What maintenance man Desmond and husband Jason describe on the other side of the bathroom door was either a tragic suicide by a distraught and...

Today I’m talking about hate crimes and homophobia in South Africa. For this episode, we are traveling to KwaThema, a township in Gauteng. There is electricity in kwathema, but there are also these huge towering spotlight-style street lights. They’re lifted that high to try provide a measure of light and security, but there are always bits the light doesn’t reach. And it was in a patch of deep shadow, in an alley between buildings that a woman called Noxolo Nogwaza was killed in April 2011....