Following a spate of murders, 70 officers have been deployed to the troubled Cape Flats, reports Andy Duffy
Mogammat Dharsey had little reason to feel threatened. The 55-year-old doctor had worked in Valhalla Park on the Cape Flats for years. He knew it was a region overrun by gangsters he had several on his books as patients, including Colin Stansfield, alleged leader of the powerful gang cartel, The Firm.
He knew them, and they knew him. So Dharsey was probably not concerned when two well- dressed youngsters walked into his Angelo Street surgery early Monday evening.
But as Dharseys receptionist turned to check her files, they strode past her, barged into Dharseys consulting room and shot him twice in the forehead. He had been seeing a patient at the time, who was left unharmed.
The only theory his grieving family have for the killing is that Dharsey was involved in building a local mosque which hardly warrants an execution-style murder.
He didnt have any enemies. He never received any threats, says daughter Fayerz Dharsey, a 26-year old masters student at the University of the Western Cape. He watched TV and knew about the violence, but it was always happening to someone else. People knew him and he was just doing his work. He felt safe.
Mogammat Dharsey is just one of a growing number of victims claimed by a sudden upsurge in violence on the Cape Flats. And, as with Dharseys death, there is no obvious explanation for any of the murders.
By midweek, the death toll included a month-old baby, killed in a grenade attack in Surrey Estate on the night Dharsey died; a two-year-old burnt to death in a petrol bomb attack in Hanover Park; and two Muslim store-owners in Belhar shot by assassins who left their tills untouched.
And then there has been a spate of other incidents: attacks on alleged gangsters homes; firebombing of petrol stations; a Lotus River man beaten and shot three times by attackers who mistook him for a drug dealer who lives a few doors away.
Gang leader Ismail April (also known as Bobby Mongrel) was attacked twice in three days. The obvious antagonists are People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), and gangsters, claiming to be reformed, who are represented by the Community Outreach Forum.
But the authorities are working on the basis that Pagad which sprang to prominence last August when its members shot and burnt gang leader Rashaad Staggie has splintered beyond recall.
The hit-and-run attacks on alleged drug dealers are thought to be the work of a string of cells small squads drawn from a particular neighbourhood that pounce on their target once police or army patrols have moved on to the next road. Both the gangsters and anti-drugs vigilantes listen in to police radio while planning their attacks.
It is these isolated incidents that are really difficult to deal with, says Andre Pruis, divisional commissioner of crime prevention and response services for the South African Police Service.
Many of the frightened people of the Cape Flats suspect that the murder of store- owners and doctors is part of a strategy to drive out businessmen, opening the way for gangsters to establish their own concerns as fronts for laundering drug money. The authorities offered a number of theories this week about why state forces cannot protect the public.
Minister of Justice Dullah Omar had to cancel a meeting with Premier Hernus Kriel on Tuesday to attend Dharseys funeral. He says the greatest mistake so far in dealing with the violence is the fact that the provincial government has totally ignored the problem.
Police efforts are undermined by heavy corruption Omar says corruption that extends to the courts, where dockets are routinely lost or sold back to the accused. Omar believes a national government task team could be deployed on the Cape Flats, repeating the approach taken in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
An independent team secured enough evidence to arrest warlord Sifiso Nkabinde on 18 murder charges. Local police, until then, had failed to find anything that would stick. I think it provided a very big lesson, says Omar.
That idea, however, has so far still to be taken up by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi. Special adviser Peter Gastrow says there are sufficient resources in place. It is just a matter of using them better.
No additional effort at national level can really substitute for creativity at local level, Gastrow adds. However, Mufamadi did call a meeting of the operational committee of the National Crime Prevention Strategy, chaired by Pruis.
The committee decided to deploy public order police from the Free State to the Flats. The contingent, thought to number around 70 officers, arrived on Thursday, bringing armoured cars with them.
The authorities believe the fightback would be more effective if communities came forward and named the guilty parties.
A week ago, Fayerz Dharsey says, she could have reeled off a whole list of measures that could be taken to bring a halt to the killings. The day after she had buried her father, however, she was lost for a solution. I dont know what to tell you.