What’s going on at uMlazi’s notorious Glebelands hostel that nearly two dozen people have been killed there, asks Vanessa Burger.
Durban - The Easter weekend has brought more tragedy to the besieged Glebelands Hostel in uMlazi. A man called Fikile Jumbile was shot at point-blank range at about 7.45pm on Thursday last week, when returning from uMlazi MegaCity with two friends. The bullet in the base of his skull ensured Jumbile’s name could be ticked off the infamous hit list, reputedly used by both police and hit men to identify hostel block committee members and their associates.
That the unknown gunman bypassed his two friends to target him bears the unmistakable mark of assassination.
Like so many who have lost their lives during the 13 months of violence at this site in KwaZulu-Natal, Jumbile was not involved in crime and was well liked by his community. He had lost all his possessions when violently evicted during the purge of block committee members from notorious Block 57 in April last year.
Unlike dozens of others – many women and children – Jumbile had managed to find shelter in another block. However, despite his vastly reduced circumstances, his continued friendship with block committee members was apparently too great a threat to allow his continued existence.
His visit to the local mall took him through the hostel’s “no-go zones” and into “enemy territory”. MegaCity is reputedly a regular hangout for Glebelands’s killers. But establishing the truth is unlikely as police have, to date, failed to secure the conviction of even one hostel killer.
Jumbile is victim 22 in the sinister block committee eradication programme.
For too long the indefensible situation at Glebelands has been characterised by official obfuscation and government departments’ assiduous disregard for the socio-economic suffering and trauma of the illegally displaced victims of violence.
During KwaZulu-Natal Premier Senzo Mchunu’s unilateral peace declaration of September 28, block committee structures were dissolved, their members accused of corruption – selling beds – and violence. If this was the cause of the problem, why would committee members themselves have pleaded for thorough investigations?
How credible is this allegation when the overwhelming majority of those killed, beaten, evicted and tortured by police have been former block chairmen, committee members, their associates, friends and family? And why has the local ward councillor, against whom many of the now deceased previously mobilised with accusations of tender irregularities and cronyism, shown nothing but contempt for the widows, orphans and homeless resulting from the chaos he has so far ignored?
At that September meeting, the premier also banned community gatherings. Despite this unofficial “State of Emergency”, a certain Block 52 resident apparently continues to mobilise the community against block committee members. This individual enjoys what appears to be an unhealthy alliance with a member of the Durban Central SAPS, a resident of Block T. This member, in turn, is allegedly associated with some of the very same uMlazi SAPS officers implicated in the torture and harassment of block committee members last year.
This Block 52 resident, suspected owner of the R5, or similar calibre official-issue firearm, used in much of the Glebelands violence, is rumoured to hold fake police identity documents and is believed to be involved in hijacking. The police need to explain their failure to investigate an individual allegedly so blatantly engaged in serious crime and who has also been implicated in many of the Glebelands hits.
Mchunu also deployed special police units to quell the hostel violence, which, while apparently working from the same notorious hit list, immediately set about torturing beleaguered block committee members. According to police sources, timing suggests these special units – a Public Order Policing Unit – acted with impunity until they overzealously tortured the individual from Block 52.
Within days, it seems, POP was pulled from Glebelands, adding credence to claims that this individual indeed enjoys senior political “protection”.
To establish a motive for so many assassinations, it might be instructive to examine events since 2006 when the eThekwini Municipality announced a 100 percent hostel rent increase to counter an accumulated water wastage debt of millions.
Hostel dwellers resisted the increase with a rent boycott. They had for years lobbied local government to empower them to effect minor repairs, avoiding lengthy service delays and the use of expensive “preferred” contractors, while simultaneously providing employment and skills training.
However, at great cost to ratepayers, the municipality stuck to its guns, and an associate of late ANC strongman John Mchunu was slated as the new ward 76 councillor, apparently to quell the hostel rebellion.
Former ANC stalwarts have claimed that Glebelands’s majority support for the ruling party stifled critical vigilance against tender and other financial irregularities, providing an ideal conduit for ill-gotten gains to be siphoned off to party coffers. Is it coincidence that at least two large hostel contractors have leading light ANC board members or directors?
The community also began to ask uncomfortable questions regarding newcomers who they claimed were allocated newly constructed hostel units by the councillor, in preference to those who had been waiting years for beds.
They continued to rail against their councillor and further allegations regarding the sale of RDP housing to party faithful in other areas of the ward emerged.
In mid-2013, thousands of Glebelands’s SACP members added their voices to recall the councillor and his office was incinerated as frustration boiled over into protest. The community remained adamantly pro-ANC, merely insisting on the redeployment of that particular councillor.
Finally, the authorities acted. The provincial ANC executive convened stakeholder talks and the eThekwini Municipality allocated R220 000 a month to protect the councillor – the most expensive muscle in the country. The rent boycott continued, together with the expenditure wasted on hiring preferred service providers to perform menial repairs and the cost to ratepayers was augmented by the enormous burden of the councillor’s bodyguards.
When talks were suspended during the run-up to the May elections, the killings and violent evictions began – and have not stopped – a means infinitely more effective and permanent than discussion to suppress community dissent.
Interestingly, the outbreak of violence was pre-empted by the arrival of the previously mentioned individual to Block 52 at Glebelands, whose friends reportedly boasted of close connections with political and former police heavyweights while attacking those who had previously called for the councillor’s redeployment.
In addition, the councillor allegedly attempted to coerce residents to support former regional treasurer Zandile Gumede in the fiercely contested battle against city mayor James Nxumalo for control of the powerful eThekwini region and its fat public purse. It has been reported that the renegade of Block 52 has been aggressively targeting formerly “neutral” blocks in an attempt to consolidate criminal and political power and further isolate dissenters.
It is easier to entrench political support and cynically extort “donations” for residents’ protection when any opposition is used for target practice and the police appear to remain wilfully oblivious to the perpetrators’ violence.
Amid allegations of torture and collusion, the police, like the premier, seem to be blaming the victims, citing lack of community “co-operation” for their abysmal failure to put Glebelands’s killers behind bars.
In the lead-up to next year’s local government elections and subsequent ANC provincial conference, is the resurgence in violence and assassinations of those perceived by local powermongers as a threat to political ambitions, a bid to entrench Glebelands as a local factional powerbase? It is disingenuous for the ANC to insist that the election of the ward councillor represents the democratic will of the people when the insidious slate system removes personal preference from community and even alliance members’ political options.
The socio-economic impact of the ANC’s dogged determination to entrench one man’s position in the face of years of community struggle for his redeployment has been incalculable and iniquitous. After exhibiting such callous disregard for human suffering, will the ANC be prepared to gamble more of its Glebelands supporters’ lives to retain one man’s position?
Irrespective of the regime, when will black lives matter in South Africa?
* Vanessa Burger is an independent community activist focusing on human rights, social and economic justice, gender issues and advocacy towards clean governance.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star