ActionSA hijacking victims tell of ordeal
“THE instructions were clear – these guys carrying guns were looking for me. They told both of us to get in the car.”
These were the words of ActionSA provincial chairperson and Gauteng premier candidate, Funzi Ngobeni, who with youth leader Hlupi Gafane was abducted during a hijacking in Centurion on Tuesday night.
In a video statement posted on the party’s official X page yesterday, Ngobeni, said his day started with an elections campaign in Orange Farm. He ended up in Centurion to fetch a generator for the party’s election campaign. Ngobeni had called Gafane, seeking her help in borrowing a generator. When he arrived at her Centurion home, he was followed by a car.
Suspecting that he was being followed, he took a detour only to be attacked by three men carrying guns as he and Gafane were loading the generator into his vehicle.
“It was around 6.30pm. I could see there was a car following me. But I said ‘let me see if the car is following me’... it disappeared and I thought ‘that is fine’ and went past Hlupi’s house.
“When she was assisting me to carry the generator, that is when three guys walked to us carrying guns. Their instructions were very clear that they have been looking for me,” he said.
Ngobeni said the criminals drove with them for more than an hour before they were dumped in a place they did not know. It turned out to be Benoni.
Shortly after the recovery of the pair after 11pm on Tuesday, ActionSA welcomed their safe return following a frantic search, via their vehicle tracking company and law enforcement agencies, who located them more than four hours after their ordeal.
Ngobeni said: “We are grateful that our lives were spared but, most importantly, we take this lesson to increase our resolve to really fix South Africa.” ActionSA expressed its profound gratitude to the SAPS “who were incredibly responsive and is deeply humbled by the overwhelming outpouring of support and concern from South Africans”, the party said.