In response to the article on page 1 of the New Age Newspaper “Hijack bosses evade cops” dated 10 January 2018:
“It is with great relief that Liberty Fighters Network (LFN) noted the arrest of alleged Johannesburg property hijacking key-pin, Mr. Jonathan Constable, and his two alleged accomplices”, states LFN’s National Representative, Mr. Reyno De Beer.
However the version provided to the media by DA Johannesburg Executive Mayor, Clr. Herman Mashaba, attempting to take the glory for the arrest of Constable yet stating that the arrest was “pure luck” and subsequent response by Mashaba spokesperson Luyanda Mfeka, is far from the truth.
De Beer has been on the tail of Constable since June 2017 when this suspect made his appearance at a property in Rosettenville, Johannesburg South claiming that the property was hijacked by its alleged Congolese owner and that the occupants had to allegedly pay their rent directly to Constable who purported to be a Corruption Investigator appointed by the Court and working with COJ.
When De Beer approached an EFF PR Councillor, Clr. Johanna Mapeko, during June 2017 she did not only confirm that Constable was helping the EFF, but also that the suspect was a cop working with “local government” in a WhatsApp message to De Beer.
De Beer initiated formal complaints to the Speaker of COJ, Clr. Vasco Da Gama (also from the DA), against Mapeko on 7 July 2017 already and provided his office with the WhatsApp communication with Mapeko in which she confirmed that Constable was a cop and also with a witness statement where Mapeko made intimidating remarks on cellular conversation recordings. Up till date no action was taken against Mapeko by the DA run council notwithstanding that she was directly linked with and seen operating with Constable as his other alleged accomplice.
De Beer also started to engage with the office of Mashaba about Constable and the general problem experienced with property hijackings in especially Johannesburg and was subsequently referred to Adv. Victoria Ramaala who is heading the Property Hijacking Investigations Unit of COJ under the Group Forensic Investigation Department.
On 16 August 2017 at a voice recorded meeting, De Beer discussed the problems with property hijackings in the city and referred to an earlier formal report De Beer submitted to COJ during September 2016 already in which De Beer did not only highlight the problems but also came up with cost effective suggestions how to fight and combat property hijackings in general.
At this meeting De Beer also informed Ramaala, who had to report back to Mashaba, about the threat of Constable and that De Beer was already actively researching his “trail of destruction” from Cape Town, to Limpopo Province and Mpumulanga. Ramaala then (16 August 2017) had no knowledge about Constable and was evidently not interested to obtain any further information about Constable from De Beer up till today.
It is therefore not true that COJ had been investigating Constable for a while, otherwise De Beer should have been approached to provide all his evidence to the investigators which never happened.
De Beer says that he had also informed COJ since September 2016 when his report was initially submitted to the DA MMC for Safety, Clr. Sun, (a practicing attorney from the Houghton suburb) about a suspect working inside the Finance Department who had been allegedly assisting property hijackers to erase large accounts and open new accounts charging anything between R10000 and R50000 for this favour and notwithstanding that even Mashaba was informed about this in an email, up to date nothing was done about this suspect.
Frankly, Ramaala was not interested to listen to De Beer and later direct follow ups with Mashaba fell on his deaf ears too.
During September 2017 De Beer personally started to engage with Gauteng DPCI Head, Maj./Gen. Prince Mokotedi, about the Constable issue and especially about a very suspicious Court Order the suspect obtained in the Regional Court of Mbombela (Nelspruit) where a one Magistrate Khumalo effectively confirmed that Constable was investigating corrupt Hawks and Police officers after a total dysfunctional and highly irregular Court process.
In a WhatsApp conversation De Beer had with Mokotedi on 25 August 2017, Mokotedi confirmed that he had to personally fetch the suspect Constable from the Rwandan Embassy earlier that month, when Constable allegedly had been taking refuge there due the claims of Constable that certain Hawks officers were allegedly threatening to kill him.
While De Beer was actively following the trail of Constable without the assistance of COJ in particular, Constable started to use his Facebook account to accuse De Beer of conspiring with members of the Hawks like Brig. Mulaudzi (the Gauteng media liaison officer who had been publishing various articles about Constable’s fiascos) to the extent that Constable somehow managed to persuade the Rwandan Embassy to “protect” him from alleged “assassination”, as Constable put it.
Notwithstanding that Mokotedi confirmed that he would be looking into the threat of Constable, no statement was taken from De Beer or any investigation took place about the matters referred to the Hawks by De Beer. Mokotedi confirmed that only one case was then under investigation implicating Constable, but that the NPA declined to prosecute effectively leaving Constable running around freely.
The reason why Constable made the allegation that the Hawks wanted to assassinate him, remains a mystery and only Mokotedi can give further information.
De Beer even reported Magistrate Khumalo to both the Magistrates Commission and the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Adv. Masutha, and neither the commission nor Minister were helpful to investigate the background of the infamous Court Order the suspect had been using to allegedly convince unsuspected victims to engage with him and at stages Constable even made use of JMPD officers with the direct knowledge of COJ as reported in the media as well.
Upon deeper enquiries, De Beer established that Constable had a very conniving history ranging from allegations to be a veteran Military Intelligence operative to allegedly linked to supplying missionaries to conflict countries and then used the alias of “Derek Davids” way back in early 2000’s.
On 14 December 2017 before 07h00, a fleet of JMPD vehicles and officers under instruction of Ramaala invaded the property of an old grandmother, Ms. Nokwanda Oliphant, in the suburb of Rosettenville accusing her of being a hijacker of the property she bought beginning of 2000’s and sold on a suspicious auction to a well-known Nigerian property investor, Mr. Prince Offiah, who had attempted to evict her last year but appeal against the eviction is still pending.
Coincidentally Jonathan Constable was also involved with this property where Oliphant made a sworn statement to the Hawks during around August 2017 already that he had taken R500 from her purporting to be a cop for COJ with the promise that he would assist her to get her property back, but ran away with the money and her documents without doing any work.
Oliphant also then confirmed to the Hawks that Constable had been working with various EFF members and in particular with Mapeko.
When De Beer confronted Ramaala on even date about the reasons why they had been harassing this Oliphant early that morning treating her like a criminal, Ramaala unprofessionally refused to communicate with De Beer and blocked him on WhatsApp. A voice recorded phone call by a one “Trevor” of her office claiming to be an attorney working with Ramaala, also refused to talk to De Beer and hang up.
Due to the unprofessional conduct by Ramaala and her alleged colleague to refuse to even communicate with De Beer to investigate an alleged property hijacking incident where Constable was of interest, LFN questions the sincerity of this plainly rouge unit established by the DA which has proved over and over again that it has no respect for occupants of properties and automatically accepts that the occupants are the alleged “property hijackers” without questioning the person claiming to be the owner.
It is therefore a lie that Constable was investigated by COJ at all and the arrest of Constable could not have been a “pure lucky” occasion, where De Beer had been trying to get the assistance of Mashaba since June 2017 and later even Mokotedi without any interest shown and they constantly aware of Constable’s whereabouts through the complaints of De Beer.
“It is as if Mashaba and Ramaala wanted Constable to create havoc and not to be caught earlier in order to use Constable as a media sensation for the DA” says De Beer.
It is further totally incorrect to even slightly suggest that Constable is allegedly the “key-pin” of property hijackings in Johannesburg. Over the past 4 years since becoming actively involved in property hijacking complaints from the Johannesburg community, De Beer had identified several far bigger key players in the property hijacking network of Johannesburg where sheriffs, police officers, COJ officials and lawyers were suspects and seemingly the units established by COJ and the Hawks to attend to property hijackings have been selectively acting on individual complaints instead of addressing the total problem.
By the time of this release the outcome of the bail application of Constable was not yet available.