Someone Close?

Right from the beginning, Taliep’s family insisted that he must have known his killers.

“There is something very sinister about this. He would not let any strangers into the house so late at night,” his step daughter-in-law, Maatoema Groenmeyer said the day after the murder.

Petersen’s well-secured home was usually monitored by surveillance cameras, but not on the night of his murder. It had been switched off.

“It’s so strange because Taliep was very security-conscious. He never switched it off before,” Taliep’s sister said.

Police also suspected that Petersen knew his killers, because he had opened the front door despite his habit of refusing to admit visitors late at night.

Even Taliep’s father said: “The person who was at the door must have been without a balaclava, because (Taliep) trusted him. (The attackers) must have pulled their balaclavas on once inside.”

The family of entertainer Taliep Petersen also apparently recognised his three masked killers from their car, clothing and voices, according to a police source.

They also said that the killers had at first mistaken Petersen’s stepson Achmat Gamieldien for the entertainer, and threatened to shoot him as he stood holding his baby.

The source further commented that it was believed that his killers followed him home from the 21st birthday party he had just attended for his nephew and niece.

Was it a relative, business colleague, friends of the family? Time would tell.

There had been a few strange events in the previous few months before the murder.

Taliep had a state-of-the-art security surveillance system installed after his wife had received a telephoned death threat against her husband in May. She was told if Petersen did not withdraw as a judge in kykNET’s Afrikaans Idols show, they would kill him. In many media reports, the house has been described as a ‘fortress’.

Two weeks later Taliep’s sister’s two eldest sons were walking home from the nearby Mosque of Peace when a car drove up to them. Three men jumped out and robbed the boys of their cellphones.

“When we notified the police, they said they were worried the phone call to Najwa and the robbing of my boys were related. They told us to watch our backs,” said Zorayna Dollan, Taliep’s sister.

A week later, Dollan said her sons were walking home from the mosque again when they recognised the vehicle as the one driven by the men who robbed them.

“When they tried to take down the number plate, the three men inside shouted at them and drove away. The police again warned us and the rest of the family to be careful,” she said.

In June, Taliep was stabbed in the neck by a close relative. At the time, Petersen shrugged off the incident and did not lay charges.

Are these strange happenings related to the murder?

The following article was written by By Peter Tromp and first appeared in the Cape Times on on December 18, 2006. Instead of writing my own article, I have used Peter’s as I feel it really captured Taliep’s spirit and talent - much better than I could do myself!

Taliep Petersen, the internationally acclaimed musician and theatre creator of such works as District Six The Musical and Kat And The Kings, was one of the local stage’s most influential and endearing figures.

Born in District Six in 1950, Petersen made his singing debut at age six after he was woken by his father at 1.30am on New Year’s Day and had to prepare for his participation in the Coon Carnival at Hartleyvale Stadium as a late replacement.

As a teenager he won the Post newspaper’s Mr Entertainment competition in 1968/69, after which he entered the professional arena by joining Alfred Herbert’s African Jazz and Variety Roadshow which toured South Africa and Mozambique.

Petersen discovered his ultimate passion of musical theatre in 1974 when he was cast in the touring production of Hair. “Because I was a child of District Six and grew up in a time when there was no black drama school, that was the first time I had a script in my hand and had to learn lines,” Petersen said in an article published in the Argus Tonight supplement in November 2005.
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