CHILDREN:
National police commissioner General Bheki Cele bragged about the reduction in violent crime in areas covered by local police stations, but this was cold comfort for the families of children killed at the hands of criminals: Avheani Mashau, 8 months, and her sister Adivhaho, 4; Tshegofatso Madidilala, 8; Masego Kgomo, 10, and the teenagers Lazanne Farmer, 14, Anika Smit, 17; and Abdul Abrahams and Lungile Dlamini, both 19.
l Adivhaho and Avheani were found strangled in Theresa Park in August. The body of their mother, businesswoman Thifhelimbilu Mashau, 28, was found two days later stabbed and half naked in an open field behind Ga-Rankuwa’s zone 15, 15km away from the family’s home. Three men, who claim the murders were a hit for money, were arrested.
- Anika Smit’s mutilated body was found by her father in his home in Akasia in October. Her forearms are believed to have been hacked off with a knife. A man alleged to have been her killer was released after charges against him were withdrawn by a Pretoria North magistrate.
- Both Masego and Tshegofatso were found murdered in January and March respectively, close to their homes in Temba and Soshanguve, their bodies mutilated – apparently for muti.
-14-year-old Lazanne Farmer was killed in September, after a three-hour ordeal in which she and a friend were kidnapped from the streets of Elandspoort as they walked to a shop to buy cooldrinks. Lazanne died when she jumped from her assailant’s car as he raced off with the two girls. Her friend, who cannot be named, was repeatedly raped before she was dropped off near Pretoria West.
- 17-year-old Leon Chimatu is still to be found. He disappeared after he was kidnapped and tortured, allegedly by members of the Tshwane Metro Police Department. He was apparently trying to reclaim goods, which he and his brother hawked in the city, when he disappeared in September.
- 19-year-old Abdul Abrahams was shot dead in February in front of hundreds of high school children as he sat in the grandstand at the Eersterus Sports Stadium with his girlfriend, Meloniece Moses, and seven-month-old daughter, Nishair, moments before the start of an interschool 100m sprint. Suspects were identified but later released due to a lack of evidence.
- 19-year-old Lungile Dlamini was strangled in May as she walked the few hundred metres home from Watloo train station. She was murdered outside her house. Unbeknown to her father, Lucas Msiza, the woman’s screams for help, which woke him that night and saw him standing rooted to the spot behind his garden wall, were those of Lungile.
PENSIONERS:
The elderly, hoping to spend their retirement in peace, were also targets of some brutal attacks by house robbers.
- Katrina Hendrika van den Berg, 65, was one of the pensioners murdered in January when her body was found at her Daspoort home, where she was allegedly killed by a maintenance worker.
- In January, Kitty Botha, 83, was murdered in her Lyttelton home, which was set alight by a gang of house robbers who fled without taking anything.
- Weeks after Botha was killed, pensioner Killian van Tonder, 75, was gunned down, allegedly by a teenager and a young man in a botched hijacking in front of a Pretoria West hardware store.
- German national, Ute Maria Wiing, 70, was another city pensioner murdered in the city. She was found dead in her Equestria security complex by her daughter in June. The daughter had searched for her mother after she had been unable to contact her for several days.
FARM ATTACKS:
Families living on farms and smallholdings on the outskirts of the city were also targets of crime, with farmers, business owners and farm- workers all in the firing line.
- Matriculant Ernest Horn, 18, was among those killed when he was shot dead in his Kameeldrift home in April, while studying for his exams.
- Less than 3km away and 10 days later, gunmen struck again. This time Suna Steenberg was critically injured as she fought off three armed men, wearing police uniforms and who were attacking her mother-in-law in the lounge of their Leeufontein small-holding.
- Weeks later in nearby Boschkop, gunmen killed construction entrepreneur Dirk Human, 41, in front of his two-year-old son. They hacked and shot him dead on his small-holding. The attack occurred moments after Human’s wife, Yolanda, left their house to drop their eight-year-old son, Dirk (jnr), at school and go to work. It came three weeks after an attempted burglary at their home.
According to Human’s wife, her husband was unable to report the attempted burglary because the Boschkop police station, which is situated less than 300 metres from their small-holding, was apparently closed for the night.
- Among those workers maimed by criminals was father-to-be, Morris Moekelisi, 26, shot in the back in May while washing his employer’s car on a farm in Pienaarspoort, near Mamelodi. The gunmen are believed to have snuck up behind Moekelisi, who is from Lesotho, as he was bending over and shot him at point-blank range when he stood up.
BAD COPS:
The Independent Complaint Directorate’s (ICD) annual report revealed that 34 people were killed by police or while in the custody of law enforcement officers in Tshwane. The 34 were among 860 suspects and innocent bystanders, who were killed by police or who died while in custody across South Africa during the last financial year. Of the 860 who were killed, 43 were children.
Other woes for the SAPS was that, while the country’s murder rate declined, Cele, while releasing the police’s annual crime statistics revealed that several of the capital’s suburbs were ranked among the most dangerous in the country when it came to violent crime. Pretoria Central, Weirdabrug and Sunnyside have the dubious honour of making South Africa’s top 20 hijacking and robbery hotspots’ list.
- A further headache for the SAPS and Cele, is the saga surrounding the investigation by the Public Protector and Special Investigating Unit into the SAPS’ controversial lease of a new national headquarters in Pretoria and provincial headquarters in Durban. The investigation has revealed that the building earmarked for the SAPS national headquarters, was to be leased for R500-million over 10 years from President Jacob Zuma’s friend, Roux Shabangu.
- The theft and loss of police weapons added to the blotting of the SAPS copybook during the course of the year.
One of the biggest such scandals was the attack on Badwang police station in North West Province by a gang of robbers, posing as complainants in October. The suspects, who have yet to be caught, attacked officers manning the charge office before making off with scores of semi-automatic assault rifles, pistols, bulletproof vests, radios and handcuffs.
- The use of police uniforms and equipment by bogus cops further dented the SAPS image. One such case, which rocked the organisation, was the arrest of Reabetswe Malebe, whose mother is a brigadier at the national police headquarters in Pretoria.
Malebe, who was later released because of a lack of evidence, was arrested with Lethabo Sesegwana, Phadima Gideon Mokgalaka, Mamelodi West police station sergeant, Dundi Daniel Masango and police administration clerk Mmatsheko Regina Masweu. Masango and Masweu were arrested as they allegedly carried firearms out of a house in the Out of Bounds security complex in Silverlakes, which was allegedly being used as their hideout.
- While police were quick to arrest the five, they were not so quick to respond to a group of Pretoria residents’ calls for help, arriving at the Montana crime scene three days after a group of men, wearing police uniforms and bulletproof vests, attacked two Chinese businessmen.
- Other controversies plaguing the SAPS was the suspension of three policewomen caught distributing a manipulated photograph of Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema from their work computers. While they were suspended within hours of e-mailing the picture, it took months for police management to suspend Warrant Officer, Joshua Raboshaba, 50, of Boschkop police station, who was arrested in connection with an armed robbery in August.
- While police say they are winning the war on crime, especially violent crime, a different picture was painted by several officers who allegedly tried to persuade an off-duty Pretoria paramedic, who was the victim of an attempted hijacking in February, to open an accident report instead of an attempted armed robbery case.
- Adding to the public’s lack of confidence in the SAPS ability to reduce crime, was a Centurion mother’s prolonged battle to get police to investigate and arrest a neighbour who allegedly molested her daughter and three other children in February. Only a month after the case was opened did Lyttelton police officers take a statement from the mother’s daughter. This was also only after the ICD launched its own investigation.
GOOD COPS:
While law enforcers were slammed by both society and devastated families for their apparent inability to reduce crime, the police have had their own fair share of grief and success in the fight against crime.
- In August, seven elite crime fighters from the National Intervention Unit and the Pretoria Air Wing were en route to Witbank to help colleagues under fire from a gang of robbers. The helicopter they were flying crashed, killing all on board.
- Another police tragedy which unfolded was the February suicide of Johannesburg-based Constable Given Ngobeni. Ngobeni, desperate to join an elite unit known as the Tactical Response Team, shot himself in the head in front of his colleagues at a Pretoria training college – moments after he was apparently told he had failed a pre-selection course. Why he was allowed to be in possession of his weapon and ammunition, which is apparently against standing orders during pre-selection training courses, is unknown.
- The SAPS notched up a major success when they arrested four suspected Chinese mafia syndicate members in Menlyn Park Shopping Centre as they allegedly tried to extort R1.5 m from four South Korean diplomats.
- The arrest of fugitive, George Christopher Sithole, a 40-year-old Zimbabwean national, on the run from British authorities for the alleged murder of a six-year-old girl five years ago, was another big achievement, with British authorities hailing their South African counterparts.
- Police also ended the operations of an international crime syndicate, specialising in the smuggling of animal body parts from across the world for muti. Dubbed Operation Tram, the operation involved police from Europe, Canada, South America, Africa, Asia and Australasia, and ended with the arrest of 16 South African and Chinese nationals, following the infiltration of the syndicate by undercover officers.
- Another international crime syndicate that fell involved the arrest of 11 people in Pretoria and the Northern Cape, who were allegedly involved in the smuggling of R2m worth of uncut diamonds and cycads worth over R2m.
- The arrest of the alleged Muldersdrift serial rapist in June was a further major feat, bringing an end to his year-long reign of terror in the area in which he allegedly attacked six women and attempted to attack another.
- The alleged Hillbrow serial rapist who attacked women students from Pretoria and Johannesburg was an added triumph for police. He was arrested in November. It is alleged that he raped more than 12 women. - Pretoria News