Johannesburg - The Red Ants are not a vigilante group. This is the considered view of chief operations officer (COO) Fuzile Balintulo and his deputy, Buti Lesiela.
Those who have unfortunately found themselves at the receiving end of the men in red know them strictly as the destructive force that almost invariably leaves them without a roof over their heads - and broken dreams.
The company profile, neatly typed and “brochured”, says Red Ant Security and Eviction Services (Pty) Ltd has interests in farming, training, security, acuaculture (sic) and engineering.
But the view communities have of the company - especially communities in distress - is of a faceless and heartless mob dressed in red with the sole mission of tearing down their homes and leaving them open to the elements.
On July 18, 2004, they assisted the sheriff in evicting residents of Protea Glen, Soweto, who had defaulted on their bond payments.
They returned on November 15, 2011, making newspaper headlines as they kicked out more rent and bond defaulters from their homes.
On August 12, 2015, they were caught on camera hurling belongings of evicted families from windows of a building in Hillbrow, Joburg.
In February, a whole street in the Pretoria CBD was blocked off as the Red Ants stormed the RNS House building to kick out more than 800 families who had occupied the property unlawfully.
They were at it again on Monday in Hammanskraal, doing the bidding of their old client, the Tshwane Municipality. They were evicting families in Suurman and Sekampaneng from land the city fathers said they had occupied illegally.
A Joburg daily wrote of the plight of a couple who spent the night in the open after their shack was destroyed by the Red Ants.
This is just about the totality of what families know of the posse of men known as the Red Ants.
Balintulo and Lesiela say their company does evictions and relocations: “We don't do the evictions unless directed by a valid court order. We only execute court orders brought to us by a recognised Sheriff. We always ensure the authenticity of the court order. There have been fraudulent court orders brought to us before, which we refused to service.”
They always do their work with the assistance of the local police and they have already turned over fraudsters to the authorities, says Balintulo.
“We always engage the SAPS,” Lesiela echoes.
They will not go into a volatile area of their own volition: “Who is going to pay us?”
They provide a service that other providers would readily offer if the Red Ants did not, the directors say.
They were employed by the Tshwane Municipality for this week's operation in which two people died. “We are not responsible for the deaths,” the two say.
According to them, the Tshwane authorities bussed in another security detail: “Apparently they were people from Mamelodi who were not trained in crowd control.”
The Red Ants ended up saddled with the responsibility of having to protect members of this group when angry community members descended on them with sticks and stones.
Three vehicles - a truck and two buses - were torched during the protests and both Balintulo and Lesiela proffer pictures showing how their men pushed the crowds back to avoid further mayhem.
“Had we not acted, probably a lot more people would have been harmed and more damage done,” says Balintulo.
He blames the other group “who even had TLBs, which attracted the ire of the community”.
The other group was clearly identifiable in yellow bibs, as opposed to the conspicuous red overalls of the Red Ants.
Their job done in Hammanskraal, they loaded the confiscated building material on to their trucks for safe storage at their warehouse in Eikenhof, south of Joburg, where their farm is located.
“Evictions account for about 2 percent of our business,” the two agree.
In the aftermath of their operation in Sekampaneng, Gauteng MEC for Human Settlements, Paul Mashatile, would later make a U-turn and say the community would not be evicted from the land.
The area has about 3 500 people who moved here about five months ago.
Certain parts of the disputed land reportedly belong to the Kekana royal house and the rest to the Tshwane municipality. The Kekanas are adamant they want their land back - and the illegal occupants off it.
The Red Ants management would not be drawn on why Mashatile would do an about-turn when they were employed to relocate the community in the first place.
The Red Ants are troubleshooters who have been called on to assist law-enforcement agencies in instances like the xenophobic attacks and the recent PikitUp strike.
“We also help in disaster management,” says Balintulo. “If we were a vigilante group, surely we'd have been arrested by now,” says Lesiela.
In these high-risk operations, the Red Ants use rubber bullets, “never live ammunition. But we have been shot at.”
Luckily they have not suffered serious casualties - yet.
The Red Ants farm sells 80 percent of their produce to the market and 20 percent “is donated to communities, and we go as far as Ekurhuleni”.
This is what they do, as opposed to the opinion people have already formed of the Red Ants.
And both Balintulo and Lesiela hope this negative perception will go away, somehow.
They are not about to give their 2 percent away and will continue doing the dirty work of whoever pays for their services.
Sunday Independent