Gustav Thiel
Residents of Betlong township outside Delmas have approached the Human Rights Commission (HRC) for assistance after they were allegedly assaulted by white South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers.
They claim their attempts to lay charges against their assailants have been ignored by local police.
Both the SANDF and the police say, in response, that the people they assaulted were criminals. But the Mail & Guardian has ascertained that some have no criminal records, nor have they been charged with crimes.
More than 50 Betlong residents claim they have been assaulted in the past two months. They also allege soldiers stationed at Group 12 military base outside Standerton have assaulted many people in surrounding small towns.
After “meeting with frustration” at the Delmas police station in trying to lay charges against the soldiers, Delmas resident Steve Ngubeni said he approached advocate Frans Viljoen of the Centre for Human Rights in Pretoria, who advised them to approach the HRC to investigate “gross neglect of basic human rights by South Africa’s soldiers”.
The SANDF has been patrolling towns south of Johannesburg since August in conjunction with police as part of the National Crime Prevention Strategy. According to Colonel Anton Kritzinger, commanding officer of Group 12, these combined efforts have yielded “successes which have led to a decline in crime” in several towns, including Springs, Delmas, Standerton and Secunda. Kritzinger could not cite statistics or specific examples of these successes.
Superintendent Josef Schoombee, commanding officer of the Delmas police station, agreed that the joint operations have been “highly successful in curbing crime in the area”. He could also not give specific examples of arrests or provide details of a decrease in crime.
He denied that either soldiers or policement have assaulted people and said these claims were made by “criminals who are now seeking a way to justify their activities”.
Ngubeni (20) told the M&G this week he is not a criminal and Schoombee is defaming him. In a written submission to the HRC, he claims that he and three other men were assaulted by white soldiers in Betlong on October 3. Ngubeni and a friend, Joseph Masipho, were travelling in a minibus through Delmas when they were allegedly assaulted.
He states: “We had our human rights violated by the very people who are supposed to protect them.
“We were four men in the taxi and there were soldiers patrolling the town at 6pm. One of the soldiers stopped us and spoke to the driver about his ID book. When we went off to an ATM, the very same soldier ran in our direction asking in Afrikaans where we were going and why we disembarked so hastily from the taxi. He searched us but let us go without asking for our ID documents.
“We completed the transaction and went back to the taxi. There we found him talking very harshly to the taxi driver and beating him on the chest as he tried to explain to the soldier what was happening. The driver was stammering as he has a speech impediment.”
Ngubeni and Masipho claim that they were then assaulted by the soldier and suffered “several injuries” for which they were hospitalised. They tried to lay a charge with a Constable Mphuthi at the Delmas police station, but were told that they started the trouble, said Ngubeni.
Schoombee said he was “completely unaware” of any charges laid by either Ngubeni or Masipho. He admitted, however, that several complaints had been received about the attitude and behaviour of soldiers.
Ngubeni claimed the soldiers, all of whom were white, had removed their name tags from their uniforms to “avoid detection”.
Kritzinger conceded it was “very possible that there could have been soldiers in Delmas at the time of Ngubeni’s claim, but they were definitely not there on official business and they might have just been out to have a little party, which they often do”.
Ngubeni and Masipho said they approached the HRC as a last resort . They said they realise they are exposing themselves to scrutiny by the police and defence force. “They could make life very difficult for us. But there are hundreds more who have felt the same treatment as us,” said Ngubeni.
“We are just normal citizens who feel our rights have been completely violated,” said Masipho, who is completing an engineering degree at the Pretoria Technikon. Ngubeni works as a technician for a company in Kempton Park. Neither man has a criminal record.
The HRC is awaiting the submissions before it proceeds with an investigation.