A case of police brutality is being investigated after a youth died in custody in the Eastern Cape
Peter Dickson
Three Barkly East policemen were suspended without pay this week after the death of 16-year-old Siphiwe Zide, who was allegedly dragged alongside a police van and his head crushed under the wheels when he collapsed.
An investigation by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) is in progress.
Zide was one of six youths, aged between 14 and 16, arrested on suspicion of housebreaking on April 10 by a white sergeant and two black constables whom police have refused to name.
ICD provincial director Alfredeen Jenneker said the survivors alleged they were taken to a dam and forced underwater at gunpoint; the policemen then threw stones at them. The youths said they were taken to a farm house and forced to break in, before four of the youths were locked into the back of the police van.
Jenneker said the youths alleged that one policeman then “tied Siphiwe’s arm to the driver’s side of the van with rope while another one tied the second boy to the passenger’s side and forced them to run alongside” the vehicle.
“While they were running, Siphiwe’s rope broke and the driver stopped the van.
“He then drove on again while he held [the youth] with his arm as he ran. The boys eventually got tired and fell and the vehicle ran over Siphiwe’s head.”
The second youth, whose leg was fractured, was also run over. He is still in hospital in a critical condition. The four locked in the van, who said they were assaulted by the police, are suffering from shock.
Jenneker said the case docket will be handed to the director of public prosecutions on receipt of post-mortem and blood test results.
The policemen were suspended on Friday by newly appointed Eastern Cape police Commissioner Wilson Toba.
Eastern Cape MEC for Safety and Transport Dennis Neer, whose office is insisting on a full investigation, said he found “the alleged offence … of a very serious nature and may dent the image of the service and damage community relations”.
Neer said in a statement: “The barbaric manner of investigation, as alleged, is definitely not acceptable and the appropriate action taken by the provincial commissioner is a clear message to all in the service and the general public that we do not take such allegations lightly.”
Jenneker, whose provincial office has been in operation for 18 months, reported in March that in the five months since October 1999, an average of 8,8 people died in police custody or as a result of police action every month. The figure increased from 7,25 deaths every month in the previous year.
He said he had hoped the figure would drop after ICD investigations had led to prosecution. In one case, he said, a Mqanduli public order police sergeant and two friends had assaulted two murder suspects so badly that one of the men died. The policeman, without reporting the incident, took the body to an Umtata funeral parlour and promised the victim’s mother he would pay burial costs if she did not lay charges.
In a second case, Umtata public order police who had arrested two men on suspicion of possession of unlicensed guns assaulted one of them in front of his wife during a search of their Port St Johns home. The suspect, driven inside a police dog cage to the police station, died during the night. In both cases, the ICD recommended that the policemen be charged with murder.
At a community meeting on April 16, Barkly East residents were outraged that the policemen involved in the Zide case had not yet been charged or arrested, saying the government’s pledges to clean up the police service “do not get to happen at grass-roots level”.
Zide will be buried in Barkly East on Saturday.
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