Peter Dickson Four months after being suspended for allegedly running over and killing a teenager who had been dragged behind a patrol van, three Barkly East policemen are to be tried for culpable homicide and additional charges ranging from assault to attempting to defeat the ends of justice. The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) has announced that the director of public prosecutions has decided to prosecute the three men, a sergeant and two constables, after completing an inquiry into the incident. The policemen were suspended without pay after the death
of Siphiwo Zide (16) on April 10. Another youth, aged 15, was badly injured in the alleged incident, which followed their arrest, along with four other teenagers aged between 12 and 14, on suspicion of housebreaking. The youths alleged they were forced to break into a farmhouse and were tormented and stoned by their accusers at gunpoint in a farm dam, before Zide and another youth were dragged behind the police van. The youths, including Zide’s younger brother, allege Siphiwo was crushed under the wheels when he fell. The ICD said the policemen, who can be named only once they have appeared in the circuit court at Elliot on September 7, will be charged with culpable homicide, six separate counts of common assault, one count of theft and one count of attempting to defeat the ends of justice. Two of the policemen have already been served with summonses, while the ICD’s Kimberley office is in the process of serving a summons on the third policeman. The ICD said 87 people died in detention or as a result of police action in the province between October 1998 and September 1999. In 1999 the ICD received 1 292 cases of deaths in custody in cells across the country.