Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete acted with lethal speed following Mdantsane’s appeal for law and order. Peter Dickson reports
Mdantsane is a bleak sprawl of humanity hugging the outskirts of East London, gripped by terror each night.
Once the relentless target of Ciskei strongman Lennox Sebe’s green-bereted goon squads, it now reels under a crime wave seemingly unchecked in the community’s eyes by dithering magistrates, drunken police and prison cells so lacking in security any awaiting trial prisoner becomes an instant Houdini.
This month, Mdantsane went back to the 1980s. Inspired by the local South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) to take back their neighbourhoods from criminals and expel them from the vast dormitory township by November, ordinary people took to the streets with sticks, stones, sjamboks and axes in voluntary nightly foot patrols.
They broke down the doors of those who robbed, raped and killed, dragging them into the streets for kangaroo justice.
The local police made the usual loud noises about people taking the law into their own hands, but the people of Mdantsane had clearly had enough. And so had homeboy Steve Tshwete, South Africa’s new minister of safety and security.
On August 5, just days after Sanco had announced its “Operation Mpimpa” community war on crime, Tshwete and Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna literally caught their Mdantsane charges napping when they turned up unannounced with police National Commissioner George Fivaz and National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.
The men from the ministries were hardly in a social mood. They had seen Sanco’s announcement in technicolour on e.tv’s 7pm news bulletin the previous night and responded with lethal speed.
Mdantsane’s desperate appeal for law and order had been heard and the government’s tough new message for its civil servants of “function, resign or be fired” was about to be spread.
Maduna, his broad face darkening and his voice steadily rising in anger, began the dressing down of the hastily assembled local police top brass and court officials at the Mdantsane Magistrate’s Court, while Tshwete, in trademark Congo guerrilla-style shades, sat menacingly at his side as the axe began to fall.
Stunned acting Ciskei director of public prosecutions Leon Langeveldt, the man in charge of what Maduna labelled the area’s “chaotic” courts that were in dire need of “new blood”, was summarily relieved of his duties. Langeveldt, who never knew it was coming, said afterwards he was “extremely dismayed” and vowed to challenge the decision in court.
Then it was Tshwete’s turn as the public humiliation continued, telling East London police Area Commissioner Sandile Hloba to get out of his “ivory tower” and take control of the Mdantsane crisis instead of blaming his subordinates.
“Criminals have a jolly good time here the way things are now,” Tshwete thundered at the hapless Hloba. “We want to inflict severe pain here so that other areas can see what happened to Mdantsane and learn from their mistakes.”
Then it was Fivaz’s turn, ordering Hloba to have a full report on his desk by the next morning that detailed the area’s problems as well as Hloba’s solutions for “setting things right”.
“I am embarrassed to have police men and women in my police force who get drunk on duty, obtain fake medical certificates to stay away from work and assist prisoners to escape,” Fivaz said.
Telling Hloba his report was to pinpoint areas with staff shortages and to include all sick leave reports and the names of all members who had been drunk on duty, Fivaz added: “We cannot afford a quasi police force in place here.”
Then they were gone, leaving police and justice officials in stunned silence. The same day, Mdantsane police station commissioner Director Alex Sofute wrote to local Sanco executive Mzwandile Buzani to request a meeting to discuss the community anti-crime campaign and its more worrying “people’s courts” proposal.
But then came last weekend, and with it, spilling out on to the streets of Mdantsane and neighbouring Potsdam and Fort Jackson, the long pent-up frustrations of crime- ravaged communities gave “the gatvol factor” a chilling human face.
On Sunday, more than 50 men and women armed with a motley assortment of weapons arrived at Konda Kebe’s home in Mdantsane’s Neighbourhood Unit 1, demanding she tell them where they could find a man suspected of gunning down a taxi driver and a commuter the previous Wednesday night.
They then began stoning the small house and were about to set it on fire when police finally arrived, arresting a vigilante they said was a Sanco member.
Later, police managed to intervene again when an old woman’s home was set alight by another group, which had also attacked two other suspected criminal refuges, hunting for her son.
In Potsdam south further up the road, 200 locals sporting axes, sticks and sjamboks forced the mother of two theft suspects to reveal their whereabouts before dragging them to face a “people’s court” where they were sentenced to be flogged.
Police arrived only minutes before the sentence was to be carried out and had to forcibly remove the terrified pair from the angry crowd. It would take the arrival of five more police vehicles before they calmed down.
Nearby stood a little pile of recovered stolen goods – empty beer crates, bottles, batteries, a portable TV, a tent – while police Sergeant Thobela Phelisile tried to tell the crowd why they should work with the police through community policing forums and avoid the DIY approach.
The locals were in no mood. The police would have taken months to do what they had done, one man said, accusing police of protecting criminals.
In Mdantsane on Monday, Sofute got the same response from Sanco, who denied any of its members had been arrested for vigilantism. Tuesday’s meeting was off indefinitely, they said, and Sofute fumed, vowing to “ruthlessly crush” the civic body if kangaroo courts and foot patrols continued.
Sanco says it cannot stop ordinary people “who have had enough of crime” and there the high stakes game of footsy has stopped, for the time being.
This week, Hloba and Sofute were on their best behaviour as Fivaz made good on his threat. Last Thursday saw the arrival in Mdantsane of George Moorcroft, assistant commissioner in Fivaz’s office, and four other top officials from Pretoria on a week-long mission “to see what the current situation is … to see if police here perform their core functions … and follow it up with immediate steps to rectify the situation”.
“We’ll do whatever needs to be done where police deficiency is concerned,” Moorcroft promised. The team will evaluate detective case loads, police receipt, attendance and investigation of complaints and efficiency of court orderlies.
Nine Mdantsane court orderlies have already been axed and replaced with “committed and duty-bound” police by Hloba since Maduna and Tshwete’s visit, while leg-irons have returned as fixed transport and court-wear for awaiting trial prisoners charged with violent crimes.
Three of the dismissed orderlies are suspected of complicity in a rash of recent escapes, while the others had disciplinary problems. While Fivaz awaits Moorcroft’s “action plan”, the people of Mdantsane stayed off the streets this week.
For the first time in years, thanks to “Mr Fixit”, they saw their police back on the beat again.