Fact Check — Is Markus Jooste really dead?

This article and video contain discussions of suicide, which may be triggering and upsetting.

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“Is Markus Jooste missing? Police STILL can’t confirm death of wanted man,” ran a headline on The South African website, while IOL went with the blunt question: “Where is Markus Jooste’s body?”

It is true that the police have been cagey about information on the circumstances of Jooste’s death and burial. But there seems to be little doubt that the disgraced Steinhoff CEO took his own life on 21 March. 

Daily Maverick, for instance, quoted an eyewitness who was clearly familiar with Jooste and who was able to describe the scene of the shooting and the arrival of emergency services on the scene.

News24’s reporting, meanwhile, included further details, such as that Jooste had told his wife he was going for a walk and waited for her to leave to play golf before going out and shooting himself.

Jooste’s suicide reportedly took place a day after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority imposed a R475-million fine on him for the Steinhoff fraud and indicated that it would pursue a criminal investigation. There have been separate reports that Jooste caught wind of the fact that the Hawks were due to arrest him within days.

The South African website cited the Sunday Independent as reporting that “police still have no information regarding the death or location of Markus Jooste’s body”.

But not even the Sunday Independent is making the claim that police have no information about Jooste’s death. 

Police told the newspaper they had opened an inquest docket into his death and were investigating, with no details to be released at that time. 

The Sunday Independent reported that police were refusing to divulge the details of where Jooste’s body was or whether it had been buried, which the paper seemed to suggest was suspicious. 

But it is highly unlikely that authorities would publically release this kind of information about a private citizen’s death, regardless of how controversial that citizen was.

It is also likely that Jooste’s family would wish to keep the details around any funeral or memorial confidential, given Jooste’s criminal offences.

It’s easy to understand why this particular conspiracy theory has taken off, given the fact that South Africa has seen instances of deaths being faked. In particular, the so-called Facebook rapist, Thabo Bester, was famously able to escape prison by faking his own death.

But in the case of Jooste, on the basis of the facts reported so far, there seems little doubt that the corporate swindler is indeed deceased. DM