Chaane Lerato Lebepe said he was going to a business meeting in Brits. Four days later he was found dead.
|||On August 11, Chaane Lerato Lebepe told his family and girlfriend that he was going to a business meeting in Brits.
Four days later, his body was discovered by a passer-by at a mine dump along the N4 near the town west of Pretoria.
A post-mortem revealed that the 38-year-old Lebepe, of Joburg, had been strangled and later partly burnt at an unknown location before being dumped along the road.
For his family and his partner of three years, Sammu Modillane, it was devastating news. He left a daughter, who turned nine this month.
“It has been very sad and scary,” says his brother, Ngwako.
“Chaane was a gentleman… everybody in the family and the community was shocked at his horrific death.”
Modillane agrees: “Chaane was a wonderful guy and a very hands-on father. He was a quiet man, not very talkative, but he was friendly and had lots of friends. He was intelligent and always wanted to invent new things.”
Lebepe, a mechanical engineer, is listed on page 100 in the Patent Journal No 8 of August 1, 2010, Volume 43 as having applied for a patent on July 7, 2010, for a “magnified solar water heater”, listed in the government’s online Green Gazette.
Now, six months after his body was found, the Lebepes and Modillane are still no closer to knowing who killed him, or why.
All Warrant Officer Mpeile Talani, a communication officer based at the Brits police station, would say on the matter is: “Police are busy with the investigation. Sooner or later, the suspects will be arrested.”
Modillane says that on August 10, Lebepe told her that he had had a meeting with a business partner, whom he named, and that it had gone well, with new projects on the horizon, including something in Brits.
The businessman apparently denies having seen Lebepe for more than a week before he disappeared.
The day he left for Brits, Lebepe told his family that he would leave his car parked at the Gold Reef City casino and get a lift with this business partner.
Lebepe had his own air conditioning consultancy, Lerato Lebepe Trading, and worked as a subcontractor for other companies.
He had been involved in several government air conditioning contracts, including for hospitals, prisons and libraries in Gauteng and other provinces.
The business meeting in Brits related to a new construction project.
Who Lebepe travelled to Brits with is still a mystery.
His car was found in the Gold Reef City casino parking lot. Security cameras there showed him arriving at about 1pm on August 11.
The cameras captured him walking to the food court at the casino, buying food from KFC, then receiving a call on his cellphone and rushing to his car, from where he grabbed a jacket and a small bag, before leaving the parking lot on foot. He was not seen again by his friends or family.
Lebepe phoned Modillane at about 4.30pm to say the meeting was over and the man with whom he had travelled from Joburg to Brits wanted to first go via Letlhabile, a township in Brits.
That was the last Modillane heard from him.
However, the last SMS Ngwako received from him was at 6.15pm on the same day, telling him where his ATM card was at home, in case he needed anything.
He also said his cellphone battery was low and he was running late.
When Lebepe’s body was found, his cellphone and wallet were at the scene. There was money in the wallet.
“He appeared to have been burnt from the waist down and his clothes from the lower part of his body were completely burnt. His hands and feet were blistered but not burnt and did not appear to have been bound together,” said Ngwako.
Modillane and the Lebepe family are pleading for any information that may be relevant in tracking down the perpetrators of this crime.
“We don’t know what to think. Chaane was not the kind of person to be involved in any trouble. He’s gone, but it is even worse not knowing what happened to him.”
If anyone has information, they can call Constable Patrick Radebe at Brits police station at 073 370 7539. - The Star