A mysterious group of vigilantes called the Black Scorpions has arisen in the Upper Tugela area of KwaZulu-Natal to combat the rampant stock theft in the area that residents say the police cannot — or will not — control.
Stock theft generates much of the income of the impoverished people along the Drakensberg escarpment.
A select few have jobs at local hotels or as labourers on farms. The lucky few who escape to Gauteng as migrant workers spend their life savings on cattle. The rest are unemployed and depend on their subsistence crops and cattle for survival.
So the theft of cattle is a serious matter for people living in the Upper Tugela districts.
”The theft of a cow in KwaMaye has a more severe impact than if a middle-class wage earner lost R150 000, a car, a home and a job all on the same day,” said one local resident.
Residents say the recent massacre of seven women and children of the Xaba family was linked to the vigilantes.
Some time about midnight on Tuesday January 22, the matriarch, Galina Xaba (64), her daughter Mlili (45) and five grandchildren were gunned down and set alight in Mlili Xaba’s homestead in KwaMaye, about 20km from Bergville.
”I don’t have the full picture yet, but there have been incidents of kangaroo courts and revenge killings in which alleged stock thieves, as well as witnesses in stock-theft cases, have been killed,” said Senior Superintendent Henry Budhram, police spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
Shortly after the massacre, Fakati David Mduba, mayor of the uThukela municipal district, talked about the long history of stock theft along the Drakensberg escarpment and the residents’ extreme frustration with the local police’s failure to investigate cases and to retrieve stolen livestock.
”This is the cause of the problems.”
Mduba said a community campaign, Shanela Amasela (sweep out the thieves), had recently resulted in an ”80% recovery rate of stolen cattle” compared with the ”2% success rate” of the police.
The mayor said that before the campaign between seven and 18 cattle a day were being stolen.
He said that late last year the authorities were urged to set up a platform for community members to supply the names and whereabouts of known stock thieves.
”For this to work, people needed to see stock thieves getting arrested and jailed. But this did not happen.”
So the local people set up their own system, the mayor said. Suspected stock thieves were rounded up, questioned and beaten until they disclosed the whereabouts of stolen cattle.
Mduba said the campaign was so successful that it quickly spread throughout the Upper Tugela districts and the Amangwane, Amziza and Amaswazi tribal areas.
”Sometimes the person who was punished passed away a few days later,” said Mduba. ”Something like five people have died.”
But the police, who have been so unsuccessful in apprehending stock thieves, soon began arresting people for taking the law into their own hands, he said.
”People are not happy about this … Houses have since been burnt … But this killing of women and children, that’s not supposed to happen.”
Besides the Xabas, at least six other murders in the Bergville district since late November have been linked to stock thefts.
Mduba said Shanela Amasela was not led by anyone in particular, but a man claiming to be active in the campaign confirmed that the activities were spearheaded by people calling themselves Black Scorpions.
The man, who did not want to be named, said the group included leading councillors and tribal headmen.
”And it’s not an ANC [African National Congress] or IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] thing. Everyone supports what the Black Scorpions are doing because the local police are not interested in solving stock-theft cases.”
Residents of the Upper Tugela, Bergville and Winterton areas marched on the Bergville Magistrates’ Court on January 13 to submit a memorandum to the South African Police Service area commissioner.
”In the memorandum they complained … about the failure on the part of the police to investigate stock theft cases and recover and return their stock to them,” said a spokesperson for the Directorate of Public Prosecutions.
”They also demanded the immediate release of the suspects who had been arrested by the police for holding so-called kangaroo courts, kidnapping and assaulting suspected stock thieves.”
After negotiations, a senior representative of the directorate advised the leaders of the march that those arrested would have to apply for bail. Arrangements were made for five defence attorneys to be available for the whole of the next week.
The bail applications began on Monday; the seven members of the Xaba family were massacred the next night.
”The homestead that was attacked … is that of a complainant in one of the cases, who had fled the area for fear of his life,” the directorate said.
Another of the Xaba family’s homesteads was attacked and four dwellings were gutted within an hour of the massacre.
Family members said that the Black Scorpions had apprehended and beaten Mkhuluzeni Xaba (45) as early as December 7 last year.
”They accused me of stealing cattle and tried to beat a confession out of me,” he said.
Xaba said he had reported the matter to the Bergville police, but officers refused to take a statement.
”We don’t talk with cattle thieves,” he said they told him.
He was caught again on January 10, tied upside down from a tree and beaten. On learning of his ordeal, his mother contacted the police, who arrested 29 of his alleged assailants.
”These arrests led to the march,” said the ANC’s Xolani Hlongwane.
He echoed the concerns of his IFP counterpart, Mduba, that the suspects arrested on kidnapping and assault charges included respected and leading residents.
”More than 100 head of cattle have been recovered since the beginning of December,” said Hlongwane. ”When you consider what that is worth to people out here who don’t have jobs you can understand why all this has been happening.”
Vigilantism has led to 107 arrests in the areas on charges ranging from assault and possession of illegal weapons to kidnapping and murder.
Police confirmed this week that they had not secured a single conviction in the 101 cases of stock theft reported to the Bergville station last year.