Tanzanian arrested after threats against Zuma wife

Steven Ongolo was arrested on Friday afternoon for extortion. He had contacted a number of newspapers making sensational claims about MaNtuli. The Sunday Tribune says it got him to reduce his story to a statement he made to its attorneys. In it he claims he received repeated payments from MaNtuli, about R200 000, over a three-year period. He emphatically denied he was blackmailing President Jacob Zuma's second wife, saying she hired him to secure mining rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ongolo also claimed to 'know too much about her' and said he was prepared to testify to this in a court of law. He says the secrets are centred on MaNtuli's 'close friendship' with her bodyguard Phinda Thomo, who reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the bathtub of his rented Soweto house in 2009. The report says details of an alleged plot to kill Thomo are contained in an e-mail Ongolo sent to newspapers this week, in which he claimed the suicide was in fact murder. It was alleged in newspaper reports at the time that Thomo killed himself after learning that a Zulu newspaper was working on a story about an alleged affair between him and the First Lady. Full Sunday Tribune report (subscription needed)