Johannesburg | Wednesday 1.45pm.
HUMAN rights violations continue in post-apartheid South Africa, with frequent reports of deaths in police custody, Amnesty International said in its latest annual report published on Wednesday.
Five years after all-race elections ended minority white rule in South Africa, there are “numerous reports of torture, ill-treatment and suspected unlawful killings by members of the security forces,” the human rights body said.
The country’s Independent Complaints Directorate received 607 reports of deaths in police custody in the first 10 months of 1998, the majority in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal provinces, said Amnesty.
In 1997, more than 5,300 complaints of assault were lodged against the police, which has been accused of brutal tactics in fighting the wave of crime which has gripped South Africa in recent years.
Amnesty cited the case of journalist Thabo Masebe, who was so severely beaten at a Western Cape police station in June 1998 after attempting to report a traffic accident that he lost the sight in his left eye.
It also pointed to reports of torture by the South African army in Lesotho, where it marched in last September to prevent a coup, and in KwaZulu Natal, which has been wracked by political violence.
A supporter of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Bongenseni Zondi, suffered multiple fractures and other injuries to his head and body prior to his death in May last year while in army custody, according to an independent post-mortem.
On the positive side, the human rights body welcomed a Constitutional Court ruling nullifying laws that criminalized homosexuality, and a change in the law to curtail the use of force by police during arrests.