Tangeni Amuphadi
A police bodyguard assigned to Minister of Transport Mac Maharaj found himself on the wrong side of the law when he tried to arrest a man who called him a ”kaffir”.
Inspector Edmund Sekatane says he called fellow officers to assist when the man resisted arrest, but his white colleagues treated him like a criminal instead.
Sekatane, who is facing charges of assault, said this week little is being done to eradicate racism within the South African Police Service (SAPS).
Sekatane was on his way to collect Maharaj from Johannesburg International Airport last Wednesday when, he says, a driver refused to make way for his car, which was speeding with its emergency light flashing because he was running late.
Sekatane, who was with Maharaj’s personal bodyguard, Aubrey Mothoagae, says all the cars ahead of him gave way except for a Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle initially gave way, but suddenly swerved back into their path as they were about to overtake.
When they did overtake, Mothoagae wound down his window and asked the driver whether he was trying to kill them. ”You kaffirs cannot blow the hooter at me like that,” was the alleged reply from the driver, Jan Christiaan Smuts van der Merwe.
Sekatane claims when they told Van der Merwe he was swear- ing at police officers, he replied: ”Black bastards, you are not police officers – and get out of my life.”
Van der Merwe denies shouting racial slurs, and says it was Sekatane and Mothoagae who called him a ”fucking white bastard”.
The two officers say when they tried to arrest Van der Merwe for reckless driving, swearing at police officers and obstruction, he refused to believe they were policemen, despite being shown identification.
Instead Van der Merwe asked for uniformed officers, ”preferably white”, and Sekatane called the flying squad for back-up, because two other white drivers were trying to prevent Van der Merwe’s arrest.
Sekatane says three white officers from Edenvale police station arrived, but they walked past him and Mothoagae to ask Van der Merwe what was wrong. They heard their Edenvale colleagues tell Van der Merwe, in Afrikaans, that he should press charges of assault against them.
Constable Frik Vermeulen demanded to see Sekatane’s identification. After asking him how long he had been in the SAPS, Vermeulen, using Sekatane’s cellphone, called the head of the VIP protection unit, Gary Kruser, and told him Sekatane was ”kicking and punching people”.
”He didn’t bother to hear my side of the story, and I reminded him that I called for back- up,” says Sekatane.
Edenvale police station commander Superintendent Blackie Swart rejects Sekatane’s allegations of racism. ”There is no doubt in my mind about this. I just don’t see what the inspector [Sekatane] is unhappy about.”
But Sekatane, who has been in the police force since 1994, says the unrelenting racism of his white colleagues makes him and many black policemen unhappy – ”especially those of us integrated from Umkhonto weSizwe and Apla [the Azanian People’s Liberation Army]. They keep referring to our ranks as RDP [Reconstruction and Development Programme] ranks.”
He says most black officers have decided to fight racism on their own because little is being done to combat it by those at the top.
The police watchdog, the Independent Complaints Directorate, says it is probing specific complaints, and is conducting research to come up with recommendations for ”systemic solutions” to racial tension in the SAPS.