This article was originally published on page 1 of The Star on September 15, 2009

By Karyn Maughan

Clinton Basson’s two killers mercilessly assaulted him and made him beg for his life before forcing him to his knees and shooting him in the head.

Now, 108 days after the 32-year-old’s brutal murder opposite a pub in Honeydew, north-west of Joburg, the policeman investigating his murder says he has done nothing to solve the case because he has no cellphone or car.

And his supervisor at Honeydew police station has refused to explain why his officers failed to identify Basson’s body for five days – despite the fact that he had his driving licence in his pocket.

Honeydew police Inspector Gabriel Nonyana has admitted that he had not fetched Basson’s autopsy report from the Roodepoort mortuary, sent the bullet that killed him for ballistic analysis or interviewed the two witnesses who saw him die because “we have a resource problem”.

“I can’t phone anyone as I don’t have airtime,” he said.

The Star has also established that Nonyana did not send Basson’s clothing – believed to have contained his killer’s blood – for analysis, but instead stored it in direct sunlight behind his office chair. As a result, the clothing could not be analysed.

Contacted by The Star, Nonyana initially claimed he was not aware of Basson’s murder case.

“Who is that? I have a lot of murder cases,” he said.

His supervisor, who identified himself as Captain Kalani, responded to questions about the case by repeatedly stating “I’m not going to explain to you”, and then slamming down the phone.

Kalani’s response and Nonyana’s comments, and Nonyana’s failure to correctly identify the location where Basson died, have done little to assure the construction supervisor’s distraught family.

Clinton’s father Dave, who has spent thousands of rands on the private investigation of his son’s murder, struggled to contain his emotion when he spoke about his son’s last hours and his family’s desperate attempts to find him.

“When my son was four years old he (nearly) drowned, and I saved him. I wasn’t so lucky the second time around,” Dave said.

He is tortured by the fact that the private investigator he hired to “find out what happened” has identified the two gang members suspected of his son’s murder.

“But we can’t do anything … because the police have done nothing to solve this case or gather any evidence. I don’t know what to do anymore because I can’t fight the state,” he said.

Kalani said his officers would not accept the evidence gathered by the Basson family’s private investigator – who cannot be named because of safety concerns – “because he isn’t a family member”.

Dave’s last memory of his oldest son was cheerful SMS banter about a rugby game that the two planned to watch on May 30. “After the game I tried to call him but I couldn’t get through … I wasn’t worried because he and his mother are not phone people.”

It was on the Monday, when Clinton failed to show up at work, that his father started to become concerned. Even up until family members tracked down the young man’s body in the Roodepoort mortuary, Dave admits he did not consider that Clinton was dead.

Area Commissioner Oswald Reddy expressed disgust at the way in which Honeydew police had handled the investigation and promised tough disciplinary action against the officers responsible.

“This is totally unacceptable,” he said, adding that “resource problem” claims were “just an excuse”.

Visit the Facebook group that has been created for Clinton:
In Memory of Clinton Basson