Ann Eveleth
WARM sun chased the shadows from the hills around Mandini on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast last Sunday, but all that lit the main rondawel of the Shandu kraal was the glimmer of a single white candle burned in memory of the two young men gunned down there last week.
Women mourning on straw mats in the dark room stopped to re-enact the the 30-minute shooting spree last Tuesday. Crouching on the floor to show how she saved five young children from the attackers who banged their weapons on the rondawel door, the grieving mother, Theresa Shandu, scowled at a mention of the peace initiative announced four months ago in the blood-soaked province.
Political leaders, she said, “like to talk about peace and happiness, but it’s only because their busy bribing each other. What kind of peace is this?” she demanded.
Her 20-year-old son Petersen Shandu died after a bullet pierced his neck. He had been playing cards with his brothers when he was shot. Sbongiseni (18) died in a hail of bullets trying to escape into the darkness.
Their brother Bongkosi and neighbour Thili managed to elude the gunmen, while Sonny-Boy hid behind the door and watched a man who threatened to kill him two days earlier search the room with a torch.
“I was down by the river last Sunday when he shouted to me that `We’re coming to shoot you because you are amaqabane [comrades] and we don’t need amaqabane in this part of KwaZulu’,” Sonny-Boy recalled.
The mourning women said the alleged attack leader – an Inkatha Freedom Party leader from a neighbouring tribal area, out on bail for a massacre in town last year – named three families in the area when he issued his threat: “They marked all the ANC [African National Congress] in the area. We are afraid. Please bring the SANDF [South African National Defence Force] here. They are our only hope,” they pleaded.
The survivors say they do not trust the police, who failed to take their statements last week, instructing them to appear at the former KwaZulu Police station in the nearby ANC-dominated township of Sundumbili: “We don’t believe the police at Sundumbili want to find the truth. There are so many cases that happen here and we tell them who is causing the trouble but they don’t do anything. If they catch someone we see him out again after a short time,” charged Sonny-Boy.
It is not the first time such charges have been levelled by ANC supporters. Earlier last Tuesday, Moses Gumede was shot dead in his driveway. It took two day before police from Empangeni came to take a statement from his wife Jabu.
Local police on the scene picked up the empty cartridges “with their bare hands”, drew no markers on the pavement and took no pictures of the bloody scene, she said. The slain Gumede, a former Cosatu shop steward, had been a witness to an IFP-aligned co- worker’s murder of his own daughter earlier this year, allegedly during an attempt to shoot his wife.
A recent police audit belies the suggestion that police are simply over-stretched and under-staffed. Sundumbili, unlike most stations in the province, is over-staffed, with 156 uniformed members to the recommended 63, including three times the recommended sergeants and constables.
Perceptions of police bias and inefficiency are compounded by the presence of at least 10 Caprivi trainees at the station, whose names and ranks from constable to detective- sergeant were confirmed this week by the station commander, Superintendent Mandla Mchunu.
Durban Supreme Court Judge Nick van der Reyden last year ordered an investigation into cover-up allegations levelled at Mchunu by one of three self-confessed hit-squad members in the Esikhawini hit-squad trial.
Network of Independent Monitors north coast field-worker Anton Pestana said the policing situation in the area was aggravated by the recent withdrawal of a Public Order Policing Unit (Popu) based in the neighbouring industrial town of Isithebe: “People had begun to trust this unit, but now they have returned to their Mtubatuba base. Other members of the unit are now patrolling the area and they are allegedly working together with local self-protection units under the leadership of IFP councillor Robert Mdletshe,” he said. Repeated allegations of torture have been levelled against members of the Mtubatuba-based Popu, known as Unit 33, but no action has been taken.
Pestana said the unit was now perceived to be assisting IFP elements intent on consolidating the party’s support, with refugees fleeing two IFP-led tribal areas to the virtually empty land of chief Jeffrey Ncgobo: “Most of the displacees are not fleeing the SPUs as much as fleeing Popu. We have witness reports of white men with black painted faces taking part in attacks together with SPUs,” he said.
A representative of the north coast National Investigation Task Unit (NITU) assigned to probe political violence in the area confirmed the reports, and said the “old networks returned to their activities” during the three-month absence of unit leader Captain Mandlenkosi Vilikazi, who was cleared last month of torture charges levelled by the IFP.
Formed to counter allegations of police bias following a massacre of 11 people in Isithebe last year, Vilikazi’s unit had brought relative calm to the area in its first months of operation. Last month the unit was on the verge of collapse under the leadership of four white policemen assigned to the unit in Vilikazi’s absence, the representative said.
“Suspects were granted bail without consultation, and people again became afraid to report cases. It would seem as though it’s going to happen all over again. In fact it already has,” he said.