Dozens of bleary-eyed immigrants were marched out of their bedrooms by the police early on Thursday morning in a raid on what was once an upmarket hotel in Hillbrow.
The immigrants, who were from countries such the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, were herded on to O’Reilley Street outside the Coronia Gardens building at 3am.
First they were fingerprinted, and then they were loaded into police vans, headed for the Hillbrow police station.
”We checked their fingerprints on the electronic database to see if any are wanted criminals,” police spokesperson Inspector Kriban Naidoo said. ”Once that is done, they will be charged and taken to Lindela [the repatriation centre near Krugersdorp for illegal immigrants]. There are about 34 nationalities living in Hillbrow.”
The raid came a day after officers from Booysens police station were shown on a television programme taking bribes to free illegal immigrants.
Naidoo said the raid was not a public-relations job in reaction to the footage.
”This raid was planned a long time ago,” he said.
The head of the Hillbrow police station, Director Danie Louw, said before the raid that gangs are making R345 000 a month from collecting rents from the building’s tenants. The new owner of Coronia Gardens, he said, wants to bring the building under control.
”This is a lot of money. These guys aren’t going to give up easily,” he said.
Two Hillbrow building managers were assassinated in July by alleged building hijackers.
Louw also warned the police to be on the lookout for a squint-eyed murder suspect.
Police stormed throughout the building, kicking down doors and searching rooms. In one of the rooms, dozens of cockroaches were inside the fridge and on the walls.
Many of the immigrants, who did not have documents, voluntarily walked down to the building’s lobby. Some carried babies and young children.
One man escaped after jumping out of the first floor of the building on to a mattress on a roof. Another tried to run past the police, but was tackled on to the ground and tossed into a police van.
The parking lot of the building, which smelled of urine and had a mountain of trash in the middle, was also searched. A mattress was stuck in one of the trees outside of the building.
Around the corner, a young man climbed a tree to hide from the police.
”What is he doing?” a police officer asked.
”He is from South Africa, but he is scared of the police,” a passer-by said.
Drug den
A few blocks away, the police followed up on an intelligence tip-off about a drug den at the Prospect Place building. Armed with automatic rifles, police officers climbed several flights of stairs and burst into a flat.
The flat was empty, but on the floor were hundreds of packets, razor blades and glass bottles, used when selling cocaine. There were also bags of bicarbonate of soda and washing powder, which the police say is used to add quantity to pure cocaine.
Outside, a car hooted repeatedly.
”That’s the warning car,” one officer said. ”There is a strong communication network here. Information is power in Hillbrow.”
Outside the building, the police arrested a Zimbabwean man who was wearing blood-stained denim pants and carrying a revolver.
They believe he was involved in a robbery at a supermarket.
Throughout the night, the police arrested more than 100 illegal immigrants. They confiscated three unlicensed pistols, a bag filled with Ecstasy, Mandrax and eight cocaine rocks.
Four men were arrested for dealing in heroin and marijuana. The squint-eyed murder suspect was not arrested.
Two South African men, who pay R18 a day to live at the nearby African Sun building, stood on a street corner watching the events unfold.
”The police are doing a good job here,” one of the men, named Sipho, said. ”These days there aren’t as many gunshots in Hillbrow as there used to be.” — Sapa