Deadly force

Tshwete’s promotion to his new portfolio has coincided with a surge of vigilantism in society at large. As well as Pagad, the Muslim-based vigilante movement People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, there is Mapogo a Mathamaga and Die Vuis, The Fist, formed by former security force officers in the Western Cape. Where Pagad draws the bulk of its support from the Muslim community in the Western Cape and Mapogo most of its members from the majority black community, Die Vuis, the youngest of the vigilante movements, has recruited its 7,000 members from Western Cape’s white community or, more precisely, those sections with ties to the old security establishment. According to press reports, prostitutes are its initial target. But its founder Ronnie Els, a former policemen, has ambitious plans to halt drug-trafficking in the province, an objective which the more vocal Pagad has failed to achieve since it burst into prominence in1996 with the killing, in full view of television cameras, of alleged gang leader Rashaad Staggie.

These organisations aside, there have been further manifestations of vigilantism since Tshwete took office. They include
• the slaying in Tembisa of a man accused of murder. Members of the community there raised his bail money and freed him, before trying and “executing” him by forcing him to drink petrol, puncturing his stomach and setting him alight;
• the capture by a white farmer and one of his employees of an alleged intruder who was forced to strip, covered from heat to toe with silver paint and forced to stand in the sun until the paint dried;
• the abduction of a 14-year-old boy accused of theft, who was then beaten, painted white and tied to a tree and left there for nine hours in freezing weather until he was rescued by his mother and aunt;
• the interrogation and assault of a suspected rapist by enraged residents of Khayelitsha in the Western Cape. He was later handed over to the local police station, bleeding and traumatised.

Vigilantism is not a new phenomenon in South Africa. It has taken different forms over the years. The Makgotla movement in Soweto, an attempt by local notables to impose tribal discipline and cohesion on the dislocated urban community, was one earlier manifestation. The vigilante movement that emerged, with the active encouragement of the security forces, in reaction to “the people’s war” launched by the African National Congress in the 1980s was another.

In post-apartheid South Africa vigilantism is fuelled by a loss of faith in the ability of the police to arrest criminals, the courts to prosecute them and the prisons to retain them. As Mark Wellman, a criminologist at Rhodes University, observes, vigilantism is a sign of “public frustration at what is seen to be a major failure in the criminal justice system.”
Tshwete takes a strong stand against the phenomenon, specifically warning Pagad that its attempts to take the law into its own hands will not be tolerated. He seeks to restore faith in the criminal justice by speedily reviving the confidence of the police and by demonstrably putting criminals behind bars. But he faces a demanding task — not only because police faith in the wider criminal justice system is itself shaky, but also because the police cannot protect themselves adequately, let alone the public.

Before 1994 many of the policemen killed had been targeted by ANC and Pan Africanist Congress guerrillas as collaborators or defenders of the old order, so it was reasonable to expect that numbers killed would fall off after the ANC came to power. But the expected decline in politically motivated killings of policemen, has been all but cancelled out by the upsurge in criminally motivated attacks (see table). From January to June this year more than 100 policemen have been killed. The post-1994 killings have occurred despite attempts by the government to remove the barriers of suspicion between the police service and black citizens through community-police forums, special seminars to induct police officers into the new human rights culture and the establishment of the Independent Complaints Directorate to investigate complaints against the police.

Figures compiled by Anthony Minnaar, of the Institute for Human Rights and Criminal Justice Studies at Technikon SA, show that the vast majority of attackers (nearly 90 per cent for the years 1994-97) responsible for the killing of policemen are either unknown or unnamed. That seems to indicate that police do not have a high success rate in apprehending the killers of their colleagues, a demoralising situation both for the police service and the public that depends on it for protection.

Surveys conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council on public attitudes to the police service show that negative views of the police have increased. Minnaar attributes this to “fear of crime among all South Africans and the perception that the SAPS [is] not succeeding in the fight against crime”.

President Thabo Mbeki has asserted that corrupt policemen are a factor, arguing that they kill their colleagues to cover up their malfeasance. His election campaign statement — he declined to elaborate on it beyond citing unspecified information that he was privy to — cannot have buoyed police morale or boosted public confidence in the police service. Democratic Party leader Tony Leon has strong views about that attempt to deflect blame away from the government, describing it as “a mocking piece of obscenity”.

It is small wonder that a draft law providing for much tighter controls of licensed guns, and making it more difficult and more expensive to obtain a licence, has provoked strong opposition. The vast majority of the nearly two million licensed gun owners cite self-protection as the reason for buying their firearms. While only parts of the Firearms and Ammunition Control Bill have been released to specialist gun associations — those representing hunters and collectors — it has caused great consternation in the gun-owning fraternity.

Juan de Greeff, spokesperson of the South African Gun-Owners’ Association (Saga), accuses the government of seeking to deprive the public of its right to own guns in a society where crime is rampant and confidence in the police service low. His fear rests in part on a clause in the draft law empowering the authorities to compel existing licence holders to reapply to license their weapons when the bill becomes law.

Deputy director-general of the department of safety and security Bernie Fanaroff has tried to convince gun-owners that the draft law is integral to government plans to curb the supply of weapons to the criminal underworld and thus to its campaign to reduce crime. He claims that many of the legally-owned guns that are stolen or lost (30,000 were reported stolen last year) end up as illegal weapons in the hands of criminals. Thus the bid to reduce the supply of weapons has to include measures to reduce the availability of legally-owned firearms. Failure to do so would render recovery of illegal weapons, some of which are smuggled into South Africa, particularly from Mozambique, a futile exercise because the confiscated guns would simply be replaced. Fanaroff has offered assurances in an attempt to defuse opposition: the draft law will be presented to the public for comment and tabled in Parliament for debate and possible amendment before being signed into law.

Saga remains unimpressed and deeply sceptical. If the department of safety and security is really determined to reduce the number of illegal weapons in the possession of brigands and bandits, Fanaroff should explain why the draft law concentrates solely on controlling legally-owned guns, says Saga deputy chairman Martin Hood. He emphasises that opposition to the draft bill is not confined to whites, who had a virtual monopoly on legally-owned guns before 1994. Now that discrimination is outlawed, many of the new licensed gun owners are black and they, too, are fearful of being deprived of their weapons. As members of previously disadvantaged communities, they will be hit hard by the higher licence fee (up from R50 to R500) and the provision compelling licence applicants to undergo psychometric tests costing about R1,200 at their own expense, Hood says.

The ANC is not exactly an exemplar for its cause of tighter gun control. It is the only political party in South Africa to have its own firearm licences: it reportedly possesses 317 weapons, including shotguns and pistols. Eleven of the weapons have been reported stolen. More serious, however, is that three of the missing weapons have been identified by police as weapons which were used in three separate armed robberies. While that may illustrate Fanaroff’s point that legal weapons can end up in criminal hands, it does little to substantiate the ANC’s credentials when it calls for responsible gun ownership. Sheena Duncan, chairperson of Gun Free SA, puts her finger on the issue. “In view of the party’s policy to reduce the proliferation of firearms, I would have thought they would have surrendered their firearms long ago. I simply do not accept that the ANC needs its own security forces to guard them. It does nothing to bolster confidence in the police”.