INTERPOL is still looking for a South African reported dead
JOHANNESBURG — INTERPOL is still publicly listing South African Mbuso Ncaza Nkosi as wanted by Eswatini for murder, despite court records showing that he later appeared in Eswatini as an accomplice witness in the assassination of businessman Victor Gamedze and reports that he subsequently died in a police shootout in South Africa.
The current Red Notice identifies Mbuso Ncaza Nkosi, born in Soweto in 1985, as a South African national wanted by Eswatini on a murder charge. INTERPOL says the notice has been approved for public dissemination and states that notices data on its website is updated every hour.
The identity matches the Mbuso “Ncaza” Nkosi who became a central witness in the prosecution of businessman Sipho Shongwe for the January 2018 assassination of Gamedze, a prominent Eswatini businessman and football administrator.
The Eswatini High Court’s judgment in The King v Sipho Shongwe identifies Mbuso Ncaza Nkosi as one of the accomplice witnesses in the case. Nkosi testified that he was recruited with fellow South African Simphiwe “Tata” Ngubane to kill Gamedze and admitted being the man who fired the shots. The court ultimately convicted Shongwe of Gamedze’s murder.
The case raises questions about why a Red Notice seeking Nkosi’s location and provisional arrest remained active after he had entered Eswatini’s criminal justice process and testified for the prosecution.
Contemporary reporting on the trial also records that Nkosi had been the subject of extradition proceedings connected to Eswatini’s efforts to bring him into the country. His evidence later became important to the Crown’s case against Shongwe.
When Shongwe was sentenced to 50 years’ imprisonment in July 2025, the Times of Eswatini reported that Nkosi had subsequently been shot dead during a confrontation with police in South Africa. Later reporting concerning Shongwe’s appeal again described Nkosi as deceased and identified him as the same accomplice witness who admitted shooting Gamedze.
TownPress has not independently obtained a South African death certificate, inquest record or SAPS statement confirming Nkosi’s reported death. The available court records and Eswatini reporting, however, consistently identify the man concerned as Mbuso Ncaza Nkosi, the South African accomplice witness in the Gamedze case.
The INTERPOL listing is therefore difficult to reconcile with what happened after the notice was originally issued.
A Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request from a member country for law enforcement agencies internationally to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition or similar legal proceedings. The country requesting the notice is responsible for supplying the underlying information, while INTERPOL reviews notices for compliance with its rules.
The current listing states that Eswatini is the requesting country and identifies the offence simply as murder.
The circumstances also raise a separate question about the status of the notice after Nkosi became an accomplice witness. The sentencing judgment records that the accomplice witnesses were discharged from prosecution after giving evidence for the Crown, further complicating the continued public description of Nkosi as a man wanted by Eswatini for murder.
South African media had already reported in January 2023 that Nkosi remained on INTERPOL’s Red Notice list, identifying him as a Soweto-born South African wanted by Eswatini. The notice is still appearing publicly more than three years later.
TownPress is seeking clarification from INTERPOL and Eswatini authorities on whether the Red Notice remains operational, whether INTERPOL was informed that Nkosi had appeared in Eswatini and testified in the Gamedze proceedings, and whether authorities were subsequently notified of his reported death in South Africa.
Until those questions are answered, INTERPOL’s public database continues to tell police and members of the public that Eswatini is looking for Mbuso Ncaza Nkosi for murder, even though Eswatini’s own court history shows that the country had already secured his evidence in the very murder case connected to his name.
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