A court-ordered swoop uncovered evidence that torture is still taking place at a notorious Johannesburg police station, reports Mungo Soggot
A surprise raid on Johannesburg’s Brixton Police Station has thrown up a towel and a plastic bag that match the descriptions given by a 17-year-old girl, who claims a policeman tortured her with the articles three weeks ago.
The girl, who has asked not to be named, was a witness to a shooting three weeks ago — not a suspect. She has laid assault charges against a white policeman she claims repeatedly suffocated her with the towel and plastic bag. She also alleges a black policeman ordered her to undress so he could beat her for more information.
After the incident, attorney Peter Jordi of the Wits University Law Clinic obtained a court order to search the police station. The towel will go to the police forensic laboratory before the case continues.
According to the girl’s affidavit — which persuaded the Rand Supreme Court to grant the order — the night before she was grilled, she was walking home through Mayfair West, a built-up suburb west of Johannesburg, when a minibus drew up next to her and a former boyfriend, Dumisani, beckoned her to join him.
When she refused, the minibus’s occupants got out and ordered her in. Some passersby rescued her and she walked home. “I thought that one of the passersby may have been a man known to me as Thabo. I do not know him very well.”
As she approached the house where her mother was employed as a domestic worker, she noticed the minibus had pulled into the driveway and Thabo and another man were following her. She called her mother who asked Dumisani to leave.
Dumisani only did so when the owners of the house came out. He reversed the minibus into the street and drove towards her mother, who leapt out of the way. As Dumisani drove off, Thabo and his companion fired two shots at the minibus, hitting Dumisani, who died that night.
A few hours later a white policeman instructed her and her mother to come to the Brixton Police Station. “We waited at the police station, but nothing happened. The policeman then brought us back to our house.”
The following day, a black policeman from the Brixton Police Station arrived at her work and drove her to her mother. During the trip, he asked whether she knew Dumisani. “I said that I did not. He told me that if I did not tell the truth he would beat me until I told the truth.”
At the police station her mother explained that Dumisani was the girl’s ex-boyfriend. The policeman insisted she knew the two men who had shot at the minibus and accused her of lying when she said she did not. “My mother’s response to the persistent questioning was that if the police were so sure that she knew who the two were, then they should put her in the cells.”
Her mother returned home and the girl was questioned further. During the interrogation a white policeman entered the office several times and said if she was lying, his colleague would pass her to him and he would “make sure that I spoke the truth”. Her interrogator eventually did just that.
“I went into the white policeman’s office and he told me to sit on the chair. I was alone in the office with him. The white policeman closed the door and took a towel which he rolled up into a sausage. He told me to sit up in the chair and ordered me to tell him who the two were who had been involved in the shooting. I told him that I knew the name of one to be Thabo.”
When she claimed not to know Thabo’s address, the policeman said she was lying. “The white policeman then held the towel tightly around my face so that my mouth and nose were covered. I was unable to breathe. I think that he only released the towel after two or three minutes. The towel was blue in colour and was quite large.
“The white policeman then left his office leaving me inside. He returned with the towel which was now wet. He again placed it tightly around my face, but this time he first placed a plastic bag between the towel and my face. The plastic bag was light in colour, being blue or grey. The process was repeated a third time.”
The following day she returned to the police station, where another black policeman with a Zionist Christian Church badge insisted she disclose where Thabo lived. “He said that as I continued to lie I should get undressed because he wanted to hit me. I then started to undress and when I got down to my T-shirt he told me that I should put my clothes back on. He told me to go and find Thabo.”
A relative helped her to find Thabo’s address. After talking to a cobbler near the local supermarket they worked out he was in fact Lucky Maphalala who lived in Zola 1, Soweto. She returned to the police station and related what she had found out.
Acting Brixton Police Station head Captain van der Westhuizen declined to comment on the matter as it was sub judice.