FORMER dictator of one of South Africa’s now-dismantled apartheid homeland states was in a serious condition on Thursday after being shot during an apparent robbery attempt, police said. Brigadier Oupa Gqozo, who ruled the small Ciskei homeland on the southeast coast before the entity was dismantled at the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, was visiting a traditional healer friend on Wednesday night when the incident occurred. During the robbery attempt, in the Eastern Cape town of Middledrift, shots were fired and Gqozo was hit, police representative Captain Mthuthuzeli Nqai said. Gqozo ruled Ciskei, now part of Eastern Cape province, with an iron fist during apartheid, and was seen as a puppet of the Pretoria government. His moment of notoriety came on September 7, 1992, when troops of his Ciskei security forces opened fire on anti-apartheid protesters in Bisho, the homeland’s capital. – AFP