The owner of the City of Refuge Rehabilitation Centre in eMalahleni, where three security guards were arrested for the murder of a drug addict who was at the centre, feels he was treated ‘unfairly’.

“The police on the scene never wanted to listen to me. It was me who called the police after we found the young man dead!” Pastor Patrick Simelane said last Thursday.

The centre was in the news after Sfiso Mcigo died and three security guards, Lukie Zulu, Sandile Masimula and Sbusiso Mavuso, were arrested on February 13. They appeared in the Witbank Magistrate’s Court the next day. All of them are still in custody and will appear in court tomorrow again.

Mcigo was severely beaten and died from his wounds.

According to Pastor Simelane, the ‘whole truth’ was not told, “I buried Mcigo, but nobody said anything about that!”
He said what ‘really happened’ is that Mcigo ran away from the centre, and was not assaulted by his security guards, but by community members outside their premises close to Siyanqoba (eMalahleni).

“The security guards picked him up and brought him back and he died at the centre.”

The rehab has been there since early this year, after ‘we were chased away by the beneficiaries at Botshabelo in December’. He mentioned that there were 64 addicts at the centre at Botshabelo, but at the centre in eMalahleni, he only had space for 24 addicts.

Also read: Meet the addicts in recovery at City of Refuge

Pastor Simelane admitted that he did not ‘submit my financial reports from the centre’ for the past two years at the Department of Social Development and the Municipal Health Department. Representatives of the two departments were also on the scene on the day of the arrest and said that the centre was not registered.

According to Pastor Simelane, the police on the scene told him to ‘shut up’ when he tried to tell them that Mcigo was assaulted by community members outside the centre and not by his guards, “They did not want to hear what I was saying.”

He felt that they humiliated him ‘in front of my kids [the addicts in the centre]’.

• On the matter of the chains on the feet of some of the addicts, he said that some of the addicts’ families gave permission to put chains on their legs ‘so they could not run away’, “But they can walk with the chains, they are not chained to something,” he said

• Regarding no electricity at the centre, he said most of the addicts can not afford to pay for any help and that is why he can not afford to put on any electricity. “Some of the kids I help, I pick up from the streets.”

• He said he lost all his sponsors due to ‘the negative publicity, “I just want to help these kids, but nobody wants to be involved in the centre anymore!’

• The pastor also mentioned that he opened an abduction case last year in November at the Middelburg Police Station after one of the young women [who was at Botshabelo at that stage] was, according to him, abducted from the centre for a week.

He said, “The police did nothing about it,” but Kenneth (Nkosoana Prince) Motsoane was arrested and received bail late last year.

Also read: Bail granted for alleged abductor

According to him, his security guard ‘slapped the accused a few times and then the security guard was arrested!’

The newspaper received a video showing Motsoane being assaulted but the police made it clear they were not the ones assaulting Motsoane in the detective’s office. Tshepo Eric Masemola was arrested in connection with the assault on the evening of November 28 last year, and he appeared in the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court the next day on a charge of assault with intent to cause grievous body harm.

Also read: Alleged abductor also accused of slitting dog’s throat

• The Observer sent a media enquiry to the provincial media office of the police about the allegations the pastor made, but not reply was received yet.