A South African Press Association (Sapa) reporter was treated for a wound in the thigh after being assaulted by striking security guards during their rampage through Cape Town’s city centre on Tuesday.
The journalist, Wendell Roelf, was also hit on the head by a sjambok and in the ribs with a rock before being saved from worse injury by the intervention of other strikers.
The incident occurred at Church Square, where he had watched the rampaging guards smash shop windows and dent car bodywork with a volley of stones.
”I had thought they were finished, and I ran across the street. Then they started throwing stones at me. I was hit on the ankle by a half-brick.
”I stopped and turned around, and looked at them. I tried to see who the fuckers were who were doing the throwing.
”A group of strikers came across to me. One guy grabbed me by the throat. I hit his hand away, and somebody behind him hit me on the head with what I think was a sjambok — a rubbery object.
”Out of the corner of my eye I saw another person making a throwing motion, and I turned my back and a rock hit me in my ribs. I also felt a stinging sensation in my leg.
”As more of them came towards me, fortunately some other comrades [strikers] intervened.”
Roelf said as he walked away he saw a ragged tear in his trouser leg. He pulled down his trousers and found a gaping wound. He was unsure exactly how the how the wound was caused. ”I didn’t see a knife,” he said.
Taken to the casualty unit of the Christiaan Barnard Memorial hospital, he received six staples to the gash in his thigh and was discharged.
Earlier during the march, Roelf was twice accosted by strikers wanting to know what he was writing in his notebook and why.
Some strikers appeared perturbed at his presence, he said, and one confronted him eyeball-to-eyeball, foreheads touching.
Sapa editor Mark van der Velden said Roelf was fortunate that his attackers were stopped.
”This is the latest in a string of violent incidents — some of them much more serious — caused by strikers allowed to run amok.
”In Wendell’s case, I am particularly disturbed that the strikers appear to have targeted a journalist.
”If Satawu can’t control its marchers — and clearly it can’t — it should not bring them out on to the street.” — Sapa