On several occasions, trawling through the online outrage from around the world in response to the video of the taxi driver who was dragged through the streets of Daveyton on the East Rand, I came across comments to the effect that this horrifying clip, shot on a cell phone, offered irrefutable proof that a considerable portion of the South African Police Service had gone rogue and was now beyond the pale. Simply put, they were a law unto themselves.
Could this be the case, I wondered? Eight of the police officers involved in this barbaric episode have been disarmed and suspended, and the station commander at Daveyton police station - where Mozambican national Jospeh Mido Macia later died from severe head and internal injuries - removed from his position.
I've been thinking about those men and what they "allegedly" did to Macia as a punishment for parking his vehicle on the wrong side of the street. It wasn't enough that they dragged him behind a speeding van for 500m to the police station, but there he was systematically beaten with fists, boots, truncheons and torches, according to prisoners being held in the station's holding cells, in a sustained assault that lasted almost two hours.
Now, two hours is a long time. It takes considerable determination and stamina to maintain such brute savagery. But Macia's assailants eventually tired and stopped, and he then lay dying, according to The Times, "in a crumpled heap, in his own blood and faeces."
It took him almost four hours to die; during that time no-one thought to give him any medical attention. Not a single person in that entire police station raised a finger to help him at any time during his ordeal.
A police source later told the newspaper of the nature of Macia's injuries: "It was so bad his organs burst . . . there was basically nothing left of his insides. His head injuries were as bad . . . his skull was crushed . . . his brain badly damaged. It is clear that those who did this wanted to kill him."
It is often said, in defence of the SAPS, that they are undertrained, underpaid and perform a largely thankless duty at great personal risk - and that it is the behaviour of a small minority that is responsible for tarnishing the image of the force. Incidents like the Marikana massacre and now this appalling incident would suggest otherwise. Quite simply, the force seems to be full of murderous killers.
The reaction from Daveyton residents is also troubling. I've watched the video several times and have tried to make sense of how the onlookers reacted to what took place before them. It's been reported that some of them cheered the police - but I'm not so sure. The sound quality was not great, but there was a lot of shouting.
On Thursday, however, it was quite clear the residents wanted blood - the police's. They attempted to storm the police station to get at those they held responsible for Macia's death and, according to some reports, even kill them, to avenge an injustice with another.
It's also worth noting that, at the time of writing, both the National Police Commissioner, Rhia Phiyega, and her boss, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, still have their jobs. In another country, they would have been forced to resign - Phiyega especially.
When she was made police commissioner last year, she described herself as a teabag dropped into boiling water. It was a clumsy metaphor, but we knew what she meant; it was a difficult, troubled position - for years now the SAPS has been plagued by a lack of leadership and vision - and she asked to be given a year before we judged whether or not she could do the job.
But, frankly, the eight months she's been at it have been more enough. She's bad. Period. There's a ghoulish element to her that she attempts to pass off as folksiness, like her dismissal of the concerns at her lack of police experience: "You don't have to be a drunk to run a bottle store."
Four days after the Marikana killings, she was thanking those officers involved for keeping "civilians safe" - the police were civilians too, she said. At the Marikana hearings, she laughed at footage of the massacre - to the immense distress of the relatives of the victims who were present. Last week she had to deal with the cock-up that a policeman facing seven charges of attempted murder had been assigned to the Oscar Pistorius case. And now this Daveyton business. True, she managed to dash off a speedy statement condemning the atrocity, but it's too late, and rather smells like mere lip service.
We've lost faith in the SAPS. Phiyega has done absolutely nothing to repair that.
Please note: Due to deadline requirements this column was submitted for publication before news of the decision to charge the cops with murder had broken.
This article first appeared in The Weekend Argus.
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