Pretoria | Wednesday
WHILE a situation of total chaos prevailed at the Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg on the night 43 people were killed in a stampede, security co-ordinators struggled for almost half an hour to get hold of the public order police (POP), the inquiry into the disaster heard on Wednesday.
At 7.30pm on April 11, 30 minutes before the Kaizer Chiefs-Orlando Pirates soccer match was due to start, there was “total chaos” (with various exclamation marks), according to a log held by Marius van Huyssteen, a representative of Wolf Security — one of the private firms contracted to handle safety matters.
Van Huyssteen wrote that various gates had been closed and people were being thrown from the top of the stands. By 7.45pm, people were breaking gates open to gain entry to the stadium.
“Everything is being broken open,” he wrote.
Van Huyssteen represented Wolf Security in the Joint Operations Centre (JOC), which had a bird’s eye view of the stadium. While there, he had continuous radio contact with Wolf guards on the ground to relay messages to them.
Christina Magdalena Stoman fulfilled a similar role for two other security firms, APS and AIN, and other people represented the rest of the roleplayers.
The public order police were not represented, and a POP member only briefly visited the JOC for 10 minutes some time before the game started, she testified at the hearing in Pretoria.
Stoman said that before the start, she did not notice anything drastically in need of attention inside the stadium, but received reports that the crowds outside were out of control. She made four unsuccessful attempts to get hold of the POP.
“It was clear to me that the situation outside the stadium necessitated POP action.”
Just after 7pm, she received reports that spectators had damaged ticket booths at the southern end of the stadium.
“From my background at the POP I wanted the POP to be deployed at flash-points like the southern ticket booths.”
At about 7.15pm she heard that spectators were out of control in the North Park Lane area. She contacted Ellis Park security chief Chaka Coetzee, asking him to have POP members deployed who could use rubber bullets to bring the crowds under control.
Coetzee contacted her 25 minutes later, saying he had located the POP.
Just after 7pm, Morris Douglas, who controlled ticket sales at Ellis Park, reported that 62 000 tickets had been sold and that more were being printed.
By 7.30pm all the tickets had been sold. Stoman said she assumed that included the newly printed ones. Meanwhile masses of people were still trying to gain entry.
Earlier it was testified that the stadium could seat 60 000 people.
Stoman said the match should not have been allowed to start under the circumstances.
“I thought as soon as people heard the yelling and screaming inside the stadium, they would be even more anxious to enter and watch the game.”
She believed the police deployment at Ellis Park that night was insufficient, and that the police were not visible enough.
The inquiry continues.