Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
It is difficult to believe that the relaxed man stirring his steaming pot at the plush Pretoria lodge is the leader of the largest and most violent vigilante group in the country.
Sipping his favourite Amstel lager, Monhle Magolego, the controversial president of Mapogo a Matamaga, is contemplating his organisation’s achievements for the year.
A number of Mapogo members, including Magolego himself, were recently cleared of various charges, including murder and assault.
The police say they failed to successfully prosecute Magolego and his members because the vigilante group had threatened and intimi-dated key witnesses to the group’s trademark vicious floggings, generally carried out with large sjamboks.
Some of the Mapogo members were facing charges of attempted murder after they allegedly threw their suspects into a crocodile-infested river, before torturing, beating and incarcerating them. Magolego also managed to survive a coup attempt against him this year by members of the organisation who do not favour his heavy-handed approach to fighting crime what he calls “medicine”.
Nestled under a colourful umbrella at Bentley’s Country Lodge, Magolego, a passionate exponent of corporal punishment, says when he’s not running Magopo which now has more than 35 000 paid-up members he passes the time at the stove.
Magolego, who has been the president of Mapogo (English for when a leopard is confronted by a tiger it turns into a tiger itself) since its inception in 1996, was well dressed for the occasion in a viscose white shirt, grey trousers and a shiny pair of Crocket & Jones.
It was with immense pleasure, he says, that he accepted the Mail & Guardian’s invitation to share a meal with him at Bentley’s Country Lodge. The staff at the lodge provided the equipment required for the occasion.
The fireplace is a replica of a typical rural African hearth. To Magolego’s delight he was afforded the opportunity to prepare his pap on the three-footed black pot. He chose to cook his favourite chicken and complemented it with braaied steak. The side plate was dished up with an array of salads and nicely cooked tomato gravy.
Ahead of the meeting, Magolego had promised to wear an apron but decided against it on the day. Perhaps an apron would be out of place with his patriarchal view of the world.
Although in most of his public appearances Magolego is flanked by two or three hench- men, this time he was on his own. He had also driven himself and wondered where he would sleep that night. “Maybe at a lodge somewhere or at a friend’s place. I will leave everything to God,” he says.
The horns and banners that often characterise Mapogo functions were also absent at Bentley’s, which itself is a paid-up member of Mapogo. While cooking, Magolego was kept busy by his Nokia cellphone that rang incessantly. “Hoe gaan dit?” (How are you?) was his response to every call he received.
Magolego’s dexterity with Afrikaans helps explain how he has attracted gun-wielding farmers in the Northern Province and in the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging heart- land of Ventersdorp in the North West to his organisation.
Magolego chats and cooks, cocooned in smoke, one hand always on his leho an African wooden tool used to prepare pap.
His favourite meal is phuthu a stiff pap served with chicken or mala mohodu the insides of a cow. Magolego says the pap served in South Africa today is generally a limp, sad imitation of what he was dished up as a boy in his native Northern Province.
Magolego’s guests, mainly members of Mapogo, appear to enjoy the meal. The members, most of whom sport T-shirts proclaiming their membership of the vigilante group, applaud their leader at every opportunity.
For much of the day, Magolego brags about how his men will continue their “fight” against crime, undeterred by either the police or the government.
Magolego challenges the government to explain their accusation that Mapogo members were taking law into their own hands. “How can they say I am taking their own law into my own hands, while there is no law which says criminals must be punished. I am making my own law,” he says to the applause of his members.
The vigilante group, he says, will consider abandoning its trademark public floggings next year and concentrate on keeping the peace with handguns. Magolego declines to elaborate further, on the grounds he might alert criminals to his new strategy. Criminals, he claims, are being “pampered” by the government and he does not want to make their life any easier. “The government gives these criminals jelly and custard. We don’t do that, we believe in the African way of stopping crime.”