Attorneys general investigating police torture face the obstacle of corruption in the force, reports Gustav Thiel
Dozens of cases detailing police torture to extract confessions or information from suspects have been handed to the Witwatersrand and Transvaal attorneys general during the past three years. Decisions about prosecutions are awaited.
Jan Munnik, the advocate responsible for investigating complaints against the police, says he has come across many more cases of torture: “There are hundreds of torturers out there.”
However, his efforts to expose them have been stymied by rampant police corruption, including cover-ups by station commanders.
Munnik’s investigations led to the conviction late last year of four policemen in Vanderbijlpark, who were found guilty after torturing a suspect with electric shocks. The last successful conviction for torture was in April this year.
His reports on another three cases, involving six policemen across the region, have been handed to Attorney General Andre de Vries. A representative says that De Vries has yet to decide whether or not to prosecute.
In addition, dozens more cases were handed to Transvaal Attorney General Jan D’Oliviera from which only one conviction for torture followed.
Munnik says that the evidence presented is strong: “I can tell you that six policemen will be prosecuted if the attorney general follows the evidence.” These cases are “just the tip of the iceberg”.
Munnik’s investigations, and those of other regional police complaints officers, were taken over at the start of last month by the Independent Complaints Directorate.
The directorate has already gone on record as saying that the number of deaths of suspects in custody or during police action is rising sharply. It is struggling to get full details.
Similar problems faced Munnik in his three- year, often single-handed battle to prove that torture is widely used by members of the South African Police Service.
“Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that almost all police station commanders cover for the people who work under them when they are fully aware that torture is going on at their stations.”
The four policemen convicted last September for the assault on Benjamin Molefe in cells at the Vanderbijlpark murder and robbery unit were Detective T Chaka, Warrant Officer S Coetzee, Sergeant D van Heerden and Constable TT Skosana.
They received sentences of 400 days’ imprisonment or fines of R4 000 each, and a further 18 months’ imprisonment suspended for four years for the “extensive” harm they caused their victim through electric shocks.
Munnik says he was able to prove the use of electric shock torture in the cases by using a forensic system he devised which checks blood samples taken from the victims. The same tests were used to prepare the cases against the six policeman.
He notes, however, that police have changed torture methods because they realise they can be detected. A current favourite is to pull the inner tube of a tyre over a suspect’s head to induce suffocation. “There are cases of other kinds of torture where we have been unable to establish conclusively that the police were responsible,” says Munnik.
Munnik also warns that the directorate – an initiative of Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi – “does not have the resources to address the problem”.
The directorate’s Pride Ndlovu says, however, that the police have been asked to forward current files of investigations into torture. The files being transferred are “still current and the directorate is therefore in no position to state which of these will result in prosecutions”.
A representative for Mufamadi denies Munnik’s allegations that station commanders are guilty of widespread cover- ups. He also says that it is impossible to comment on police torture as it is “very difficult” to keep statistics.
No records are kept of convicted police torturers “since we as yet have no way of classifying the different kinds of torture employed”.