Criminals fear the wrath of Mapogo far more than police officials and the law, report Mungo Soggot and Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
The head of South Africa’s largest vigilante group seemed unperturbed by the news that some of his members had thrown two suspected chainsaw thieves to crocodiles. In fact, he considered the grisly tale something of a windfall.
“If they tell terrible stories about Mapogo, I like that. It’ll scare the criminals,” said Monhle Magolego, president of Mapogo a Matamaga.
The Mapogo members in question appeared in an Mpumalanga court on assault charges on Thursday, walking free after their trial was postponed. They allegedly threw the suspects into a crocodile-infested river, before torturing, beating and incarcerating them. The five men allegedly proceeded to spend the next few days taunting their suspects with threats of being returned to the crocodiles, eventually handing them over to the police.
It is not the first time Mapogo members have got into trouble for dispensing what they call medicine. Magolego himself was arrested shortly after the group’s inception in 1996. But in general, Mapogo members appear to go about their work undisturbed, a chilling exposition of the breakdown of the criminal justice system.
Mapogo a Matamaga is taken from a Sotho proverb which says that when a leopard is confronted by a tiger it turns into a tiger itself. Magolego claims his group’s membership has grown from less than a 100 in 1996 to about 35 000. He says it is rare for a day to go by without one of his 80 branches beating suspected criminals in Mpumalanga and the Northern Province.
The public floggings are carried out with large sjamboks, and are supposed to be confined to suspects’ buttocks. Magolego, a businessman and candidate for the United Democratic Movement in Pietersburg, says his floggers never intentionally kill, but admits suspects have died when the flogging is “overdone”. He likens such incidents to a patient dying in hospital: “A doctor does not take the patient to the operating theatre to be killed, but to remove the ills from him.
“This is the African way of stopping crime. The criminal must lie on the ground, and we must work on his buttocks and put him right,” he said.
The state’s tacit acceptance of the Mapogo was in evidence last Sunday, when Magolego and a band of loyal members travelled to a forlorn township near Pietersburg, Mogodi Mantata, to form the group’s newest branch.
Shortly before arriving, they pulled off the road to prepare their procession into Mogodi, which entailed strapping a large banner to the back of a yellow bakkie.
A police car drove past slowly, its occupants observing with mild curiosity the gathering of about 40 people, many of whom clustered around a BMW sedan with tinted windows. Most sported T-shirts proclaiming their membership of the organisation, whose name on the T- shirts was underlined by a sjambok.
The owner of the BMW, Magolego, chatted to his followers, flanked by two henchmen, one of whom had a chunky, gold-trimmed pistol tucked into his trousers.
The Mapogo convoy headed off shortly afterwards, the yellow bakkie setting a slow pace on account of a headwind, which threatened to wrench the banner from its moorings. Once in Mogodi, they drove, horns blaring, to the house of the local chief, who had invited them about a month earlier.
While Magolego and some of his senior followers conferred with the chief, the rest sat under trees, wandered around whipping the air, or sang and danced the group’s song, sjamboks waving.
One of those who remained outside was Boet Erasmus, a steel worker from Tzaneen who had given up his Sunday to travel with Magolego, and one of the few white members of the gathering.
Erasmus told a story echoed by many of his co-members: the police are useless, crime is insufferable, and the Mapogo are the only cure.
Erasmus said the police rarely intervene. He recalled how a few weeks earlier he and some other members had picked up a “skelm” in town, bound him up in rope and put him in the back of his bakkie. A police car across the road had drawn up and one of its occupants had asked what was going on. “We told them to bugger off.”
He is not concerned about getting the wrong man. “With the first hiding you soon find out if you’ve got the wrong man. It takes about 10 minutes. Then we give it a break and give him another 10 minutes. They yelp something terrible. If they’re guilty they soon tell you where the goods are.”
Mapogo’s annual membership fees are between R50 and R165. It provides members with Mapogo boards and T-shirts, all of which are adorned with the head of a tiger. Members are given the cellphone numbers of branch heads, whom they can dial up when they have a problem. They are not obliged to whip suspects themselves, but some, like Erasmus, choose to anyway. About 10 000 farmers are believed to belong, and several big businesses are members too. Businesses can be charged up to R10 000 a year.
Magolego said that when they arrive in an area they work hard, but after a while, the crime rate slows. He said they do not indiscriminately flog known criminals, but wait for them to err, and then “investigate”.
This, he said, is not difficult. “If we are members of the community, we live with them and it is easy to get news. If they have stolen it is easy to get an exhibit. The job is easier now that Mapogo is well recognised. If we approach a criminal he tells us the truth. You don’t have to go to school to learn how to catch a criminal.” Magolego himself prefers not to flog – “I am the leader”.
Residents of Nkowakowa township, near Tzaneen, one of Mapogo’s strongholds, say criminals fear it more than police officials. The provincial government at one stage indicated it would clamp down on Mapogo, but recently claimed ignorance of the group’s existence.
One of the local residents of Mogodi delighted with the group’s arrival last Sunday was Zachiriah Mafoko, a former policeman from Johannesburg’s John Vorster station. “Policemen don’t do their job,” he said. Of the Mapogo, he said they must “do what they think is right. They must hit, they must kill.”
And then Magolego appeared from the chief’s house, having swapped his grey suit for a ceremonial blazer with gold trimmings. He strode regally between two lines of chanting, sjambok-waving followers, and then climbed into his BMW to lead the procession to a packed community hall where local residents were waiting to join.