”I am going to charge you with the murder of that dead person.” With these words Superintendent Ngubane of the Booysens police station turned what had been just another dreary encounter with dysfunctional police into a full-on fight over the state of policing in Gauteng.
I am a Quaker and on Friday evening, November 3, I was attending a meeting in Rosettenville. I am not familiar with this area, so departing from the meeting I followed fellow Quaker Alex Kuhn, who was also heading home. As we turned on to Kliprivier Drive we passed the scene of an accident. A pedestrian had been run over, blood was running in streams across the street, and there wasn’t an ambulance or police vehicle in sight.
Alex pulled in at the Booysens police station up the road. She went inside to report the accident. I waited outside. She was gone for quite a while. While she was gone I watched various police officers coming and going with food and Cokes and ferrying people, who were laughing and joking, in police vehicles. The whole place looked like a rave scene. Eventually Alex came out, visibly upset. She had walked through the whole station. Many officers were out back, milling about and having what looked like a party. No one would respond to her pleas for someone to go to the dead body. Eventually she screamed for the commanding officer. A man in plain clothes introduced himself as Superintendent Ngubane and said he would go to the dead body ”in a minute”. She left in disgust.
While she was telling me this Ngubane came out and ordered her to take him to the accident scene in her car. She refused, saying, ”No way, that is your job, take one of the vehicles in the parking lot.” He then walked off. Alex got in her car and, thinking I was following her, drove on to the highway heading for home.
Except I wasn’t following her. I didn’t want this policeman to think that only one person had seen their refusal to attend to a death. I rolled down the passenger window of my car. ”I want you to know that I too am a witness to the fact that the police here have done nothing about the body in the road,” I said. He walked up to me, jotted down my registration number and slowly, deliberately and with great menace said: ”I am going to charge you with the murder of that dead person.”
If I had just driven off this would probably have remained a dinner-table story about crime and the general uselessness of the cops. But I didn’t. I shot out the car shouting: ”This is outrageous behaviour. How dare you threaten me. I am an attorney and I am going to lay a formal complaint. I want your name, rank and badge number right now.” He walked off with great nonchalance, ignoring me, brushing me off with a contemptuous wave of his hand, confident in his impunity. I carried on shouting at his retreating back: ”You’re a bad cop, a disgrace. No wonder this station is notorious for being the most corrupt in the country.”
At that he turned on his heel and came flying towards me. ”You cannot say that, you are insulting me. I am going to lock you up!” With that he grabbed hold of my upper arm, gripping me hard and pulling me toward the station entrance. At that moment I felt the cold, metallic taste of fear in my mouth — what the hell was I doing in Booysens, alone, late on a Friday night with a crazed police officer who had threatened to charge me falsely with murder and who was now trying to drag me off to the cells?
My brain sort of switched off except for one thought — I knew I had to fight to stay out of those cells. It wasn’t the criminals in the cells I was afraid of: it was the criminals in charge of them.
We tussled as he carried on shouting at me (I cannot remember what he was saying– the words were blurring), stabbing his index finger PW Botha-style in my face. I felt a stabbing pain under my nose; he had hit me in the face. I tried to wrench free, he held on — my jersey tore as we fought. I got away. He started to walk away. I then turned on him again, screaming with rage — ”You are insane, look at how you are behaving.” I ended my tirade with ”You are a corrupt arsehole,” not very Quakerly language I am afraid. At that he turned back again. I ran to my car, tripping over the kerb and injuring my ankle. I was shaking so badly I was hardly able to turn the key.
I got away and phoned Alex. We agreed to meet at the Parkview police station where I would lay a charge of assault. I was feeling weary, and not up to another encounter with the cops just then.
But as Alex said when we walked in, the place couldn’t have been more different. Three or four uniformed police officers were behind the desk, staffing the clean, quiet charge office. They were professional, courteous and concerned — exactly how police officers should be. As I was giving my statement they asked me if I knew the policeman’s name and rank. My heart sank as I realised how difficult pressing charges was going to be as I had no idea and said ”No”. But then Alex calmly said, ”But I do — he identified himself to me in the parking lot as the commanding officer, Superintendent Ngubane.”
The policemen listened with great concern. After the statement was taken I was informed in careful detail about the process. My heart sank — the case now leaves Parkview and gets handed over for investigation at — yes, you guessed it — Booysens. ”What’s the good of that? He’s a superintendent there,” I wailed. I was assured that this would be handled at the station commissioner level and the officers were at pains to advise me to contact the Independent Complaints Directorate if no one had contacted me within a few days.
As we were leaving, the commanding officer at Parkview said: ”You know, we work so hard to serve the public and when an officer behaves like this it undoes all our good work.” He looked forlorn and defeated. I felt so sorry for him and all the others like him: good police officers, working for very little pay, against terrible odds — not just violent criminals but also disinterested, corrupt police officers.
As I was leaving I looked up and saw a photo of provincial Minister for Safety and Security Firoz Cachalia. I knew him from Wits in the 1980s. He is a fine man of principle and integrity. A light came on as I thought that perhaps I might be able to find a way to hold this cop to account — not just for my stinging lip, grapefruit-sized ankle and torn jersey but, more importantly, for his and his colleagues’ callous disregard for the person lying dead in the street.
On Saturday Margaret Diedricks, director general of safety and security for Gauteng, contacted me. She listened to my story and was professional and very concerned. She said that the investigation was starting immediately and she would call me on Monday with a progress report. She stressed that they were working to improve policing in the province and what a terrible setback an incident like this was to their work — I could hear the devastation in her voice.
This is not the state of emergency era. The police cannot act with impunity. Within 24 hours I had laid charges with the help of concerned police officers, and senior government officials were impressively responsive. It seems that Ngubane might rue the day he acted out his caricature of a bad cop with me.
The problem, though, is one of equality of access to justice. I am highly educated, a professional and an academic, and I have ready access to top lawyers, journalists and government officials — so for me there is probably going to be justice at the end of the road. What if I was poor, uneducated and living near Booysens? I imagine justice would be the behaviour meted out by Ngubane.
If bad cops are allowed to be commanding officers of our police stations, people will simply stop reporting things such as pedestrians dying (or worse). They will stop for fear of being abused or realise that there is just no point — that the police simply do not care about people lying dead on the street.
When on-duty police officers would rather party than attend to something as serious as a death, the nation is in deep trouble.
Superintendent Ngubane: you need to be held to account for your actions. The public is not asking for heroics, but we need to ensure that you and your colleagues do your jobs. That includes treating members of the public with dignity and respect — whether we are bringing you information or dying at an accident scene. Our Constitution demands this of you.
Justine White is a director at Mkhabela Huntley Adekeye, and visiting senior fellow at Wits Law School