Sibusiso John Gcabashe, 28, maintains he is the late KZN maskandi musician Khulekani “Mqgumeni” Khumalo.
|||Sibusiso John Gcabashe, 28, who created a stir by claiming to be the late KwaZulu-Natal maskandi musician Khulekani “Mqgumeni” Khumalo, appeared briefly in the Nquthu Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, charged with fraud.
The case was remanded to February 14 for a bail hearing.
Colonel Jay Naicker said detectives had been dispatched to Dundee to investigate the allegations after Gcabashe claimed to be Khumalo, who died in 2009.
Gcabashe was arrested on Monday after police questioned him and established through comparing fingerprints that he had falsely identified himself as Khumalo.
On Tuesday, people flocked inside and outside the courtroom for the short hearing, as they had at Khumalo’s home last week when news broke that the singer had been “resurrected” from the dead.
On Sunday, Gcabashe, claiming to be Khumalo, stood on a police truck and addressed thousands of people who had travelled from across the country to see him.
With a heavy police presence to control the crowd, the impostor told people that he was Khumalo and that he had not died.
He claimed to have been kidnapped by a traditional healer who had kept him in a forest in Gauteng, and to have escaped before the healer could turn him into a tokoloshe. He also claimed his captors had cut off his dreadlocks to insert a nail in his head – which would be the final phase of turning him into a tokoloshe.
Khumalo’s relatives, including his wives, were split, some believing that Gcabashe was indeed the dead singer and others not. - The Mercury