PHILLIP NKOSI, Pretoria | Tuesday
THE Directorate of Public Prosecutions has vowed to tame the tiger in Mapogo-A-Mathamaga, the country’s most feared vigilante group, by setting up a special task team to probe the group’s activities.
The formal justice system has proved ineffective in dealing with the excesses of the group, whose name comes from a seSotho proverb that means “when a leopard is confronted by a tiger, it turns into a tiger itself” – or to fight violence with violence.
In the most high-profile instance, Mapogo leader Montle Magolego and 11 of his lieutenants were cleared of murder and assault charges in August because witnesses were too afraid to testify against them.
This week the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Pretoria set up a special task team to probe hundreds of criminal cases pending against the vigilante group in Mpumalanga and Northern Provinces.
DPP provincial director Dr Silas Ramaite said the new unit would be headed by a deputy director, assisted by two advocates. Each of the provinces would be represented by two members from their departments of safety and security.
Ramaite said the DPP’s national director, Bulelani Ngquka, and the provincial MECs for safety and security had been consulting about the formation of the unit for months.
There are more than 200 cases pending against Mapogo in the Northern Province alone, ranging from murder and attempted murder to torture and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
Mapogo is widely feared because of its reputation for meting out heavy-handed justice to suspected criminals and for its infamous “truth serum”- a chilli ointment smeared on sjamboks to extract confessions. Members have even tossed suspects into crocodile-infested rivers and used high-voltage shock machines to extract confessions.
The formation of the new DPP task team proved Mapogo had become “a high-profile problem”, said Christian Bezuidenhout, a senior lecturer in the department of criminology at the University of Pretoria who has conducted extensive research into “groups in conflict”.
Vigilante groups were mushrooming because people had lost confidence in the criminal justice system, he said.
The group has grown from a band of 100 frustrated Northern Province businessmen in 1996 to an organisation with 90 branch offices and some 40000 members. – African Eye News Service