The family of a prominent soccer boss has vowed to approach Afrikaner lobby group, AfriForum, to help solve the case, after 29 years of delayed justice.
Rama Kuppan Reddy, who turned whistleblower on fraud and corruption within the local soccer board, was found murdered in his car a few kilometres away from his home in Durban. The grief-stricken family, this week, vowed to bring the perpetrators of this heinous, unsolved crime to justice in the new year. Since his death, five family members had died heart-broken without knowing the identities of the three perpetrators – including co-officials – in this unsolved murder case.
Each year Friday, 3 December, brings back sorrowful memories to RK Reddy’s surviving family members. Reddy’s slumped body was found in his abandoned white Toyota Corolla under a tree in Waterfall Road, Sparks Estate, in 1994.
His younger brother, Venktas “Sonny” Reddy, has pledged to launch a new campaign ahead of his brother’s 30th death anniversary in 2022: “As a family who had been robbed of a valuable and influential member who could have played a powerful role in uniting football and working towards creating an equal and non-racial country in the post-apartheid era, we are determined to preserve his selfless legacy in the new year. We will leave no stone unturned to make sure that the perpetrators of this cowardly act of murder will not go unpunished and will finally be put behind bars.”
In the latest development, sources have revealed that:
• Ahead of highlighting the SAPS cold-file murder mystery, family sources hinted that they would approach the Afrikaner lobby group, AfriForum, which was involved in the investigation of Durban’s Orlando Pirates’ goalkeeper, Senzo Meyiwa’s brutal slaying, to assist them in bringing Reddy’s killers to justice.
• Surviving officials of the SA Soccer Federation have allegedly threatened the family with legal action if the family refused to hand over Reddy’s death certificate to enable them to allegedly claim an estimated R300 000 from the dormant SASF Trust Fund. Reddy is one of the trustees of the funding he created before the merger with the other national soccer outfits that created the South Africa Football Association (SAFA) and Professional Soccer League (PSL) – both currently competed in world and continental football. Reddy, who rose from a local referee and soccer manager at the Asherville FA to provincial and national leadership status, colours and Struggle-era political credentials, was a stickler for good governance, took an anti-corruption stance and played his administrative game shrewdly and strictly by the rules. This cost him his life.
He secretly compiled a dossier on how his co-officials were fiddling public funds at the Southern Natal Kwa-Zulu Soccer Board. Police offered a R250 000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his killers. KZN Police spokesman, Colonel Jay Naicker, said the SAPS Media Centre needed pertinent details for the new corp of police investigators to comment and look into the incident.
His 71-year-old salesman, younger brother, Sonny, speaking from his home in Johannesburg, said Reddy’s death anniversary was a “painful” part of each year. “Many family members have passed on, heartbroken since the death of my brother. Five of them have died not knowing the truth about the circumstances of his murder.”
In his Will, RK Reddy had bequeathed his family home in Dunnottar Avenue, Asherville, to his sister, Angela Naidoo, who died in May this year, aged 79, and her husband, Dan Naidoo, who died in 2019, aged 83. Reddy’s three brothers, Artistic Glass owner Chin Reddy who initially took up the case with detectives in Pinetown, and plumber Bobby and Krish died without the case being solved. RK Reddy was 46 at the time of his gruesome death.
Many of Reddy’s family and friends remembered him as a man with a straight-arrow approach that made him a thorn in the flesh of his detractors. In the 1970s, he lifted the lid on flamboyant football PR man, Abdul Bhamjee, for having allegedly pocketed R2 000 as a commission for raising a sponsorship from a bank for an inter-provincial tournament at Milpark, Johannesburg.
“Some of my brother’s friends and colleagues were traitors, who used his popularity to gain the limelight, and some were directly involved in his death. The SAPS and the prosecuting authority were working hand in hand to derail the process by protecting those who were responsible. The investigation was conducted by the Sydenham Police, which has a long-standing history of corruption,” claimed a bitterly disappointed Sonny.
On Saturday, in the early hours of 3 December 1994, Reddy’s slumped body was discovered behind the wheel of his motor vehicle in Waterfall Road, overlooking the Charles Hugo Secondary School in Sparks Estate, a few kilometres away from his home in Asherville.
The night before, Reddy, then president of the SA Soccer Federation, was accompanied by some co-officials to a soccer function in Tongaat, and his car was later waylaid and hijacked in Quarry Road, Springfield. At that time police confirmed that Reddy, a leading insurance consultant, was driven in the back seat of his car by his unknown assailants to Cuttings Beach in Merebank, where he was severely assaulted and strangled to death and brought back dead to Sydenham.
