Wonder Hlongwa
Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi’s new initiative for Richmond, announced on Tuesday, has already been tried and failed.
Mufamadi’s two-pronged approach to halt the murders in the town includes sending an additional 240 policemen there and transferring four policemen.
But the four were served with notices three months ago – in April – ordering them to transfer out of KwaZulu-Natal. Despite this move, they are still in the Midlands. Captain Johan Meeding and Captain Rudie Kok of the national investigations task unit and Captain Jerry Brooks and Captain Shane Morris of internal security have instructed their lawyers to ask for reasons for the transfers and are vowing to fight them in court.
Mufamadi said on Tuesday that they would be transferred because “they were known to have contributed to a breakdown of trust between the Richmond community and the police”. This week a source in the safety and security ministry confirmed that the four policemen served with transfer notices in April were the ones Mufamadi referred to.
Mufamadi’s representative Andre Martin said he could not confirm or deny the allegation at this stage.
Brooks and Morris – whom the African National Congress alleges were United Democratic Movement leader Sifiso Nkabinde’s apartheid police handlers – said this week they would “not take it [the transfers] lying down”.
They said if Mufamadi is transferring them because he believed they were part of a third force, the minister must prove the allegation. Brooks said Mufamadi’s “superspies” were misinforming him.
Brooks, who was removed from the investigation into last April’s Richmond killings, has applied for amnesty in connection with the abduction of an ANC activist in Swaziland. Dion Cele’s remains were exhumed, along with those of other two activists, on a farm in the KwaZulu- Natal Midlands last March.
Brooks and Morris were security police operatives in Richmond in the 1980s.
Morris was among the group of policemen called in by Mufamadi this week to brief him on the situation. He said he told the minister he did not know what was happening because he was removed from the investigation. But he lives in Richmond.
Meeding shocked Richmond residents when – while he was head of detectives in the area last year – he instructed policemen to inform Nkabinde first whenever they searched the area. He was investigated by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) for his involvement in the execution-style killing of five ANC councillors in Richmond last year.
“He was taking statements at the scene of the murders when everybody was there, which is not good police conduct,” said Stix Mdladla, KwaZulu- Natal ICD director. “People also alleged he escorted the killers’ vehicle to the scene of the killing. But there was no proof of all that, because people are scared to speak.”
But Meeding said on the evening of the murders he was at a bible study group and has 20 witnesses who can testify to that. He added that there was nothing wrong with taking statements at the scene of a crime.
He said the transfer was a “racial issue” – “the ANC is getting rid of white officers” – and argued it was unfair for him to take the blame for police inability to end the Richmond violence because Senior Superintendent Bushie Engelbrecht had failed to investigate it properly. “I’m not going to go down for other people’s fuck-ups,” Meeding said.