Justin Pearce
MARIA SEKATANE proudly points out the photograph on the wall of her tiny sitting-room in Meadowlands, Soweto. In the picture, her son Montsheng stands next to Chris Hani. Both are in MK camouflage gear, and the tropical vegetation in the background tells that the photo dates to the years of exile.
These days, Montsheng Sekatane is fighting a different kind of armed struggle — against crime. Last Sunday, Montsheng shot and killed 18-year-old Linda Dladla on the streets of Meadowlands. Sekatane is a member of the South African Police Services, but he emphasises that he was not on SAPS duty when he killed Dladla. Rather, he says, he was acting as a member of the local “community police forum” — a concept which, in Meadowlands, has evolved a long way from its origial SAPS-approved meaning.
“I am heartbroken,” he says of the shooting, though he shows no obvious signs of regret. “But the law should have prosecuted him.”
Numerous eyewitnesses have linked Dladla to an armed robbery of which one of the victims was Mail & Guardian photographer Ruth Motau. Motau was visiting her brother’s home, also in Meadowlands, with her eight- year-old son on Saturday afternoon when armed youths entered the house.
“From the bathroom, I heard my brother and sister shouting ‘Ruth!’ I wondered why — then as I came out of the bathroom there was this guy with a gun, who demanded the car keys. I gave him the keys and sat down, and prayed that my son would come to me and not look at the robbers.”
The three robbers took turns to remove valuables — a television, a video recorder, a microwave oven and compact discs — from the house, and to keep the family covered with the gun.
“He pointed his gun at me, at my son, at my brother,” Motau recalled, still shaken three days after the
When the robbers had made off with the car, leaving the family locked in the house, Motau dialled 10111, the number advertised for the SAPS Flying Squad. There was no reply. Her second call was answered — by a police officer who told her she must come to the police station before the police would do anything. Motau’s brothers started doing their own detective work. The three robbers were, after all, known in the community as notorious tsotsis. That evening, Ruth’s brother Maemo Motau noticed the stolen car at a street party, and informed the police. When he went back to the car in which he had driven to the party, he found two of the robbers standing next to it, and they demanded that he hand over the keys. He refused.
When Maemo returned later, the stolen car had disappeared again. At dawn, the search resumed, this time with the help of the community police forum (CPF). The car had been spotted in Zone Two, but eventually it was located again outside a shack in Zone Four.
“The CPF boys showed us where (the robbers) put things in those houses,” said one witness who was involved in the search. “Everyone who lives there is doing the same thing. In one house you can’t see what’s going on because there is so much stuff: TVs and household appliances. There was a policeman with us and the (CPF) boys were showing him where everything was. As we came the (robber) boys were running away; they were all 16 or 17 years old.”
Later Maemo Motau went out with Sekatane and another CPF member in two cars to try and track down the suspects. Before long, they came upon Dladla and the other two robbers. One of the youths — apparently not Dladla — had a gun, and opened fire. Sekatane shot back. Dladla, running away, received at least four bullets in his back and in his leg, and was dead within
Needless to say, Dladla’s own family are outraged. His grandmother, Lydia Gumede, while admitting that her grandson was no angel, was furious that “everybody who was there says he fired six shots against such a small
She knows Sekatane, and believes him to be someone who has taken justice into his own hands with no regard to the rule of law.
“We heard that Motsheng was a bodyguard of Winnie Mandela. But that’s nothing. We want to know what right he had to shoot rather than take him (Dladla) to the police station.”
Sekatane’s family say they have received threats from Dladla’s family, swearing revenge for their son’s death. They clearly have no more confidence in the process of law than Sekatane did himself.
Ironically, the community police forums were an initiative supported by the SAPS to improve the relationship between the police and the community in the interests of better policing. But in Meadowlands, the term has come to be applied to vigilantes who may or may not be connected to an official CPF. The vigilantes are also known as SDUs, after the ANC’s Special Defence Units, or simply as “comrades”, reflecting the fact that many of them, like Sekatane, are former MK soldiers.
Sekatane will not comment on his alleged links to Winnie Mandela, but others in the community are adamant that he does work as her bodyguard, and that the bodyguards of certain prominent government figures also put in time as vigilantes when they are not on official
“I would like to thank the CPF,” said one witness to the robbery. “If they do this they can show the community can stand alone and stop the violence. It is sad that Linda died. But we had to protect ourselves. And the police we phoned didn’t come at all.”
Back in the sitting-room with the picture of Chris Hani, Sekatane turns to me to deliver the punchline. Up until now we have been speaking through an interpreter. Now he addresses me directly, summoning up a sentence in English: “I won’t stop in my duty of protecting the community against criminals.”