The ANC praised police for the swift apprehension of three men in Tzaneen on Tuesday but on Wednesday the SAPS backtracked and said that the three men were in no way linked to the shooting on Sunday.<\/p>\n
According to police, Mthembu withdrew cash at an ATM in Mandela Street (eMalahleni) when he was confronted from behind by an armed robber.<\/p>\n
He was ordered to withdraw his limit but he turned to face the robber, when a shot was fired, grazing Mthembu’s cheek and shoulder.<\/p>\n
Mthembu escaped to his car where three other robbers were waiting.<\/p>\n
The foursome then proceeded to rob Mthembu of cell phones and money.<\/p>\n
Mthembu rushed himself to hospital and the robbers fled towards Middelburg.<\/p>\n
Police arrested three men in Tzaneen on Monday night and told the media on Tuesday that the men were being questioned in connection with the shooting.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday however, brigadier Selvy Mohlala publicly confirmed that the men, found in possession of a stolen laptop, cell phones and bank cards, could not be linked to the eMalahleni shooting.<\/p>\n
He backtracked hours later, issuing a statement that the men could very well be linked to the attack, and interrogation was ongoing.<\/p>\n
Mthembu meanwhile is doing very well in the ICU of eMalahleni Private Hospital where he was admitted.<\/p>\n
Following the attack, an EFF supporter vented on social media, commenting that it was because of Mthembu’s “big mouth” that he was shot.<\/p>\n
On Thursday brigadier Mohlala again said that none of the men arrested in Tzaneen have been charged with the shooting.<\/p>\n
CCTV footage of the incident was given to the police by ABSA who was ordered not to circulate the footage.<\/p>\n
Brigadier Mohlala also declined the paper the opportunity to flight the footage “as it is part and parcel to the investigation and cannot be aired at present”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People fear that the shooters of former Mpumalanga ANC Chief Whip, Jackson Mthembu, may have fled to Middelburg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":20458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}