Angella Johnson speaks to Swanieville residents about the stoning of a councillor this week
IT was a scene reminiscent of biblical times, or the township violence of the 1980s. Three bus-loads of schoolchildren marched on the shack of a local African National Congress councillor in Swanieville squatter camp on the West Rand, fire-bombed his house and stoned him to death.
##But Eric Ndeleni was the wrong man.
He had just dropped off his two children at a local creche last Monday morning, and was preparing to go and bail his brother-in-law out of jail, when the mob – youths aged between 16 to 22 – started to rain stones on his house.
Ndeleni survived the Swanieville massacre in 1991 – when police escorted an Inkatha impi into the township to murder ANC supporters. But he died now at the hands of local children seeking vengeance for the death of a classmate, Emanuel Dube, in a local shebeen.
The 200-strong group from the nearby Mandisa High school were looking for Ndeleni’s brother-in-law, who had allegedly shot Dube during a fight the previous Friday. But the brother-in-law was being held at nearby Kagiso police station where he had already handed himself over.
The baying bunch, who came by bus, found only Ndeleni and his wife at home. Under the watchful eyes of at least six policemen, Ndeleni at first spoke to the crowd but when they failed to disperse, he drew his gun and fired twice into the air. As the group fled, a fresh wave approached from another direction.
According to Ndeleni’s wife, Nondumiso Zwedala: ”One of the white policemen took away his gun, so we thought they had come to protect us. But when Eric tried to hide behind them, they pushed him away.”
As the couple fled the scene their home was fire-bombed. Zwedala said her husband turned back because ”everything we had was inside”. The stone throwing continued and they fled once more, followed by the crowd. One neighbour alleged that teachers were among them.
Zwedala fell and was badly beaten up, but it was Ndeleni they wanted. He was chased several hundred metres until felled by the hail of stones. As he lay wounded on the ground a heavy boulder – bigger than a soccer ball – was sent crashing down on his head.
The blood-splattered rock was later retrieved and is being kept by the family. It still has pieces of the victim’s hair on it.
Ali Lukhele, local branch secretary for the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco), was one of the first people on the scene after the slaying: ”The police just stood around and did nothing when the mob arrived, even though they had a strong presence nearby because of the taxi violence outbreak,” he complained.
Two Casspirs stood guard over the body. ”Eric was still breathing but they would not let us take him to the hospital, because they said an ambulance had already been called. We waited two hours; by then he had died,” said Lukhele.
The situation was described as ”extremely tense” in the squatter camp in the days following the killing, with people calling for retribution. Jessie Duarte, the Gauteng MEC for Safety and Security, met the children and their teachers for several hours on Wednesday, then addressed a crowd of angry residents. She appealed to them not to take the law into their hands, but to await the results of an inquiry,
”We don’t want to see parents fighting against children,” Duarte said. ”The children are frightened and confused. They still don’t know why Emanuel Dube died. They are angry, and think the police did not do enough – as on other occasions when children have been killed.”
Swanieville has been rocked by taxi violence over recent months and the aftermath of the political battles between Inkatha and ANC supporters remains. Duarte warned that an atmosphere of distrust and intimidation existed in the area which might have forced the children to act the way they did.
Krugersdorp’s mayor, Stephen Motingoa, said he was concerned about complaints that the police had just stood by and watched the attack: ”The picture we get is that they did not do enough to protect him. They knew before that something was going to happen because they had warned another councillor that Eric’s house would be attacked that day.”
But the Kagiso police deny any prior knowledge that Ndeleni was in danger.
Said Motingoa: ”There are clearly discrepancies in the information, so an inquiry will hopefully tell us whether the police acted appropriately.”