Eight men have been arrested and will appear in court for the deaths of 21 people over 17 days in Marikana informal settlement in Philippi East, Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said yesterday.
He said four of the suspects were directly linked through ballistic testing to the murders of 11 people on September 29, while three suspects were arrested but were out on bail for the vigilante attack on three young men set alight on September 12.
One person, whose bail was not granted, was arrested for the stoning of suspected criminals on September 27.
Mbalula said there was only one suspect on the run and police would “round him up very soon”.
Nyanga residents had died from "shootings and direct assassination", he added, saying crime intelligence had been deployed in the Nyanga precinct.
On September 29, a group of men believed to be linked to a gang shot dead 11 people thought to be linked to community patrols.
The shootings were believed to an act of revenge after night patrollers allegedly killed 12 suspects.
In relation to the four arrests emanating from the 11 murders, Mbalula said: “They are arrested also for other criminal activities that they have been involved in, (including) terrorising and killing people around here.
“For the murderers of the 11 people we salute our forensics in this particular regard. As the minister of police I am encouraged by the work the police are doing in responding to the fight against crime where our people are besieged and are sufferers of an unsafe environment where they live.”
All the suspects, according to Provincial Police Commissioner Khombinkosi Jula, will appear in court today. He said the investigations into the various murders were at a sensitive stage but revealed that the suspects were “multiple offenders: “We have forensic leads linking them (to the 11 Marikana killings)".
Philippi East Station Commander Bongani Mtakati said within a period of three months there would be 1000 neighbourhood watches trained in Philippi East.
“The whole idea behind neighbourhood watches is to make sure that residents take ownership of their communities,” said Mtakati.
“If we work together we will be able to change this area.”
Asked when the SANDF would be deployed to crime hotspots, Mbalula said: “It is going to happen.
‘‘We are processing it (and) it will happen before Christmas.
“We must move to an operation and for a specific period. We don’t want society to feel under siege.
“When the resident signs, he must know where they are going and for which specific period and which operations they are going to undertake.
‘‘It is taking a bit of time but it is going to happen, I assure you,” said Mbalula.