Joburg at night, cctv footage of a robbery, policemen taking cover, man being whipped.
Ten years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s Johannesburg, has become one of the most violent cities in the world.Last year in South Africa there were 22,000 murders, and over 200,000 robberies…The police seem overwhelmed.And now, desperate citizens are turning to private security groups and vigilantes, who are meting out an ancient kind of justice…
TITLE: SA LawFriday
COMM – Friday night in Joburg. I’m with the Police’s Flying Squad..
FARAI PTC – The police have heard that there’s a robbery in progress in a place called Melville – and we’re just going there to back up 2 units that are already there – it’s suspected that the person may still be in the house or whatever he’s trying to rob.
COMM - .…the victim was waiting for us..
UPSOV VICTIM – it was a .38UPSOV F and COPHe robbed him of an ATM card and a cell phone then he ran away.
the suspect is believed to be still in the area, he broke into this man’s house and he took a cell phone, a cell phone, with a .38 calibre pistol.
COMM – Guns are used to steal the smallest things. So the police begin a search they send out an all points bulletin with the suspect’s description…
A man matching description from the house break earlier has been spotted trying to use a card in an ATM machine. We are rushing there now to see if it is the same person.
UPSOV COP Where in Jephie street?
F and COPCOP It’s the same suspectF you’ve got him?
F PTC so everything has been recovered so the police in about 20 minutes have recaptured the man, and they’re recovered a .38 that he used to rob a cell phone and to take away a man’s cash card. He was arrested here trying to use that cash card to take out money.
FARAI - this is it
UPSOV COP a .38 special Smith and Wesson.
COMM –Ten years after apartheid was replaced by democracy South Africa is awash with guns, crime is how many people have decided to beat poverty..
COMMBut it’s not just criminals who have guns…a few days earlier, Jan Hendrik de Wit was at home enjoying a bar-b-que…
JAN – 3 guys with balaclavas went and they pointed guns right at my heart onto my heart and the other two into my face.
COMM – His wife pressed the panic button. The robbers started to run, and Jan saw his opportunity…
JAN – I grabbed one of the guns which is very accessible
FARAI – that’s a 12 round
JAN – it’s a 12 round protector shot gun. The gun I grabbed and get out of the door and chasing people down the street – I been going this way, with a gun – like I said I’m not Rambo. Open up the door I ran out to the street. The adrenaline is pumping a lot with a gun.
FARAI –you’ve just had three guns at your head
JAN – yeah a couple of seconds ago 3 guns. When I reached a point here, I saw the guys running down hereF – in the shadows thereJAN and I was shooting at him, 3 shots and I just saw the guy was crippling like that.
COMM – He keeps a gun in every room of his house. This is the second time he’s been attacked, the first time he killed an intruder…
COMM Jan believes the government’s failure to control crime is undermining South Africa’s new democracy.
JAN – after 10 years it didn’t get better it get worse. Where are we going to start are we going to have to run around with guns like this – is that the thing that’s going to happen. Where’s our freedom now – they have been fighting for their freedom – I also want to be part of that freedom.
COMM – On the other side of the tracks, is Alexandra township – poor, built as a source of cheap labour in the apartheid days, here, the residents are just as fed up with crime. UPSOV – it was very bad. We had to do something we couldn’t just sit down and fold our arms and watch these things happening .
COMM - Bulldog, an ex-policeman, told me that the residents have set up their own patrols to deal with crime.So far four volunteers have been killed and Bulldog himself was wounded only six months ago.
UPSOV FARAI – where did they shoot you?
BULLDOG – here - on the hand here – you can see my finger
BULLDOG – I came to this place, to come and retrieve the gun, to confiscate the gun from that guy. That’s when I got shot.
FARAI – so what, you grabbed the gun and he pulled the trigger?
BULLDOG – Yeah
FARAI - he could have shot you in the head.
BULLDOG - that’s the risk that we took.
FARAI – why does the community have to do this and not the police? I see the police on the streets of Alexandra why don’t they do it?
BULLDOG – but the main thing is that the police are not all over at the same time. And then they are not there when things happen, things sometimes happen like this inside the house.
COMM I decided to see for myself what the volunteers got up to. It’s Saturday and the Orlando Pirates had been playing Kaiser Chiefs.
FARAI PTC so people will be celebrating the football score. Orlando Pirate have won one nil, there’s a huge age old rivalry between these two clubs. There’ll be drinking, there’ll be partying. Where’s there’s drinking and partying there’s often a lot of violence and crime.
Comm Bulldog took me on patrol around the streets of Alexandra..And soon enough there is blood on the floor..There’d been an incident in someone’s house…Bulldog steps in to check everything is ok..
F PTC –there’s been a fight here. We arrived here and there’s blood all over the floor – a man apparently had a knife put through his hand.
COMM - Nelson Mandela, whom everyone here calls Madiba, walked from prison over a decade ago. His long walk to freedom filled south Africans with hope. But I found that many people think the crime wave began with that walk..
FARAI – 10 years ago you had a new South Africa. Madiba said rainbow nation blah blah. Have things changed?
BETTY – nothing changed – it got worse
CHRISTINE you know what, after Madiba was released I think things goes worse it was OK before – we had apartheid but after Madiba was released everything changed, people said they were going to get everything free and it’s not like that you have to work.
COMM – The volunteers stop everyone and search for weapons, a part of their task is to remove illegal guns off the streets..
FARAI PTC – it’s not an easy thing to stop a man walking down the street of his township and say you have the powers to search him. So there’s a lot of reluctance on the part of the citizens.
COMM by end of night, the team had recovered 2 illegal hand guns, dealt with an attempted shooting, an attempted rape
BULLDOG – when we started there was a time when police couldn’t go on foot with the community cos they didn’t trust each other.
FARAI – they didn’t trust the police?
BULLDOG – but since we started in 1999, no policemen are killed in Alexandra. It’s easy for policemen - even by themselves they can drive in the township.
COMM – this is Dieplsloot a sprawling township on the edge of Johannesburg. Nearly a million people are crammed into a couple of square miles which are the setting for six killings a week.
COMM. Crime is strangling small businesses. Peter Nzamisa owns the local bottle store. It’s been broken into 4 times in the last year. The most recent break in was last night.
PETER – they went through the roof twice and went through the ceiling and as you see now the ceiling’s been broken.
COMM Peter feels that South Africa’s new constitution is too good to everyone, including the criminals..
PETER - the policemen they don’t do a nice job because they don’t have power like before. If they can change a little bit, give the police power like before then thing s will be much better because now if someone’s done a crime, the police now have got no right to hit that guy who’s done the crime.
FARAI - so you think there should be more capital punishment? You think they should be sjamboked?PETER – like before they should be a little but beaten and then they can confess.
COMM – There are security companies all over Joburg…Peter employs three – but he’s most impressed with one called MAPOGO, because of their hands on approach..
PETER – like Mapogo, if you join Mapago and you phone in, the come quicker. If you get information they go to those guys and they interrogate those guys, those guys can confess.
FARAI and do they use the sjambok?
PETER – yeah they use the sjambok.
UPSOV WILLIE – Line up!COMM – the Sjambok – a long leather whip - is the favourite tool of Willie the head of Mapogo in Deipsloot. He finds it ideal for whipping his guards into line.
UPSOV WILIE Attention. You use the right leg, the right leg. Right about turn
I/V WILLIE AND FWILLIE they should exercise like at school, like what we used to do like soldiers. Like a policeman in the force.
FARAI and they are going to protect businesses who are your members.
WILLIE – Ya, all the members who are under Mapogo, we take as our guards to there.
FARAI – so they’ll protect those businesses?
WILLIE yes
FARAI - cos those businesses have paid you money
WILLIE they’ve paid me money that is correct. They are my babies I must look after them.
WILLIE – where’s my sjambok? Where is my sjambok.
COMM - Mapogo was originally a vigilante group set up to protect the local communities from crime. Now businesses pay Mapogo around a hundred pounds a year for their security..Mapogo claim they have up to 70,000 [stress] paying members, all across South Africa. Who sign up for the robust way in which Mapogo deals with suspects.
WILLIE – this is where we give the medicine
F – what’s that Willie – You see we use the whip, give the medicine here
F – Right so you get a suspect you bring him in here
W – We bring him in here
F – You take the sjambok.
W_ We take the sjambok here we take the hose pipe, we give the medicine
F – So the medicine is basically the whipping
W- Yeah the medicine is basically the whipping. You know if somebody gets arrested either breaking into some ones property or doing something wrong it is , if he’s not given medicine he’s going to come back again
F – He’s going to do it again.
W – Yeah, if you give medicine they must get thorough medicine, but don’t overdose.
F – don’t overdose, otherwise they may die.
W – They might die or they get crippled and then you are no more sort of preventing the crime.
F - sounds like rough, rough justice
WILLIE – it’s not rough. That’s only the way we will never stop beating, if you stop beating then the value of Mapogo goes down.
What about SA’s police service ? I wanted to see what they were up against.The police in Hillbrow, the centre of Joburg, told me new year’s eve was their busiest night of the year...There is a large criminal population here, and this is the time they vent their frustrations...
PTC Its ten to midnight and it’s New Years Eve, and the police seem to have done a very good job of containing this area. It’s supposed to be so notorious..
COMM: Hillbrow’s tower blocks are filled with people throwing all manner of missiles at the police below.
PTC Here we go.. the first missiles are being thrown at the police.
Farai: I’ve got a bad feeling about this, a bad feeling about this. Keep going, faster, faster. Jesus Christ, dammit turn round, turn round now just a make a detour now. There’s the cops, there’s the cops. I don’t know where everything is coming from.
PTC It’s the middle of Hillbrow and I really don’t know what’s going on. All I know is there is a mixture of exuberance here over the new year and a real passion to do something to the South Africa police..
F; I’m trying to get out of here as soon as I can. You want us to leave the town area?
COMM As well as fireworks, there were stones,– and gunshots
F- This is too much yeah. 10 minutes past midnight 1st January 2004. These men have very kindly almost saved our lives. They pulled us out of our car and told us we cannot drive any further in Hillbrow without their protection. We’re now trying to see the best way we can get out from the centre of Johannesburg.
After a night like that I understood why it’s hard to recruit policemen – and why numbers have fallen by a third in the last decade.And when I went back to Hillbrow, I discovered yet another reason why the country’s crime figures keep soaring.
F PTC here where we are in Hillbrow, downtown, so many people Nigerians, Congolese, Zimbabweans come to get a piece of south Africa’s wealth
VOX POP 1 – African’s are dreaming to come down here and when they are coming down here they don’t find anything – you find out that they resort in crime.
VOX POP2 – those South Africans are saying that we are causing the problem in South Africa, we are selling drugs, we are doing this and we’re doing that.
FARAI – do the police hassle you?
VOX POP 3 – of course
F what do they want from you the police
VOX POP 3 – they want papers, you know.
COMM – The police say that many of the fruit stalls are a front for selling drugs…
SUPT ERASMUS – everywhere these people are sitting on the street, they’re selling fruit and cell phones and stuff, this is all a front.
FARAI – they tell me they are so hungry that they need to survive somehow.SUPT ERASMUS – they’re hungry? Yah it is quite strange that they are always hungry but hey are driving around in good vehiclesINSP HILLS – look at the cars standing hereF – these are all cars from people who live around here?COPS YEAHS
COPS JUMP OUT
Upsovt
F walk to camera COMM People around here don’t see the police, who still have a large number of white officers, as being on their side.As we drove around I noticed the police radios only seem to chatter in Africaans. They still face an old hostility borne from the days of apartheid. F PTC the other day I was down in these streets talking to immigrants and everybody telling me their problems. Today I pitch up with 2 white policemen and I’m a sell out.
MAPOGO SIGNF walks inMan being questioned COMM I got a tip off that Mapogo, the security firm I visited earlier, were holding a suspect …
F in doorway F PTC – Mapogo have got hold of a man who they’ve accused of stealing several things; a TV a generator. And they’re now interrogating him to find out if he is the thief.
Man being questioned COMM – Mapogo want him to tell them which items he sold, and which he still has.
FARAI in office with interog behind FARAI PTC well according to the private investigator, Ricardo, the man is lying, he hasn’t given up the TV and the generator and all the things that he’s stolen. So they’re trying to find out how they can best get the truth out of him.
Man fold shambok COMM Suddenly, a shambok appeared…Amon had worked as a gardener..He desperately pleaded that all he’d taken were two double AA batteries, anything else that had been stolen had nothing to do with him..
F talks to man FARAI – how do you feel about this?Do you think you deserve the sjambokMAN SHAKES HEADIt’s a strange kind of justice.
FARAI – could he take you guys to the police for assault?GUARD – if he likes.FARAI but you think he’s guilty?GUARD – yes
Man at tableThen F walks out of office COMM – It is Mapogo’s clients who have asked for Amon to be interrogated.. in the Mapogo way..the police were not informed.
F PTC FARAI PTC – so what’s going on in here is a really, really strange situation. You’ve got Mapogo, this so called community protecting force, who are interrogating a suspect who happens to be working for one of their clients, who the client suspects of having stolen something. It’s a massive conundrum. And at the same time the police are nowhere to be found.
GVs driving COMM I was curious to meet the people who had asked for Amon the suspected thief to be picked up…
GV’s house and Mapogo sign COMM Several miles out of Joburg, I met Mary-Ann…she’d been in this house for 5 months and lost a computer, a TV, and construction tools
Walk and talk UPSOV – F and Mary-AnnF - How many times have you been robbed here ?Mary-Ann – 5 times – they robbed us there and then they came down to the cottage here.
Walk and talk COMM– after the fourth time they decided to lay a trap – Mary-Ann and her hustband installed hidden camera.
TOWARDS COMPUTER FARAI – so basically you have cameras everywhere?Mary-Ann – it happened yesterday at just after 10, cos we went to the shop, he gave us five minutes and then he went about his business.FARAI – good God. Do you know what Mapogo did to him when he went to their offices?Mary-Ann – No.FARAI – they wallaped him, you know that? They sjamboked him.Mary-Ann – well I think they must have, because apparently he told them plenty.
FARAI – so do you think that’s a good way of dealing with these criminals?Mary-Ann - it’s a better way than dealing with it any other way. FARAI – they only understand the sjambok.Mary-Ann – that’s the only way, the only way they talk. You see if you tell the police they’ll take him in, they’ll ask him a couple of questions and they’ll let him out the next day.FARAI – and now because he’s been beaten he’s given up the information.Mary-Ann– he’s given the information, the police would not have found that out.
DRIVEInto compound COMM – before I left SA, I wanted to check up on Amon, the man Mapogo had been holding – and was surprised to learn that they were still holding him 4 days after his “citizen’s arrest”
F walks down track FARAI PTC – we’ve just arrived back at Mapogo’s headquarters and we hear that a man we saw being beaten last time we were here, has received some more medicine as Mapogo call it and now he’s .. . they fear here that they may have over done his correctional punishment.
Man in chainsMeets up with Willie FARAI - so on Saturday, when we came to see you did you beat him up again.WILL – ya, he got some more medicineFARAI – after we left?WILLIE – that’s correct.FARAI - I spoke to one of you people today and they said that you are going to keep him here until he gets better.WILLIE – that’s correct.FARAI – why can’t you take him now?WILLIE – no no we can’t take him nowFARAI why because the police will sayWILLIE .. .. that’s overdosing
FARAI walks to manShots of bloody T shirt FARAI – how are you man, do you remember me – I came on Saturday – you were wearing overalls. Do you remember?The beating you got was it very painful?MAN SPEAKSF – they beat him too much and he has a pain in his body and he’s bleading inhis buttocks is that right?MAN SPEAKSF – on your pitishoo?
FARAI – what do you want to do now? Do you want to stay with Mapogo or do you want to got to the police?MAN SPEAKSF – you don’t want to go to the police? You think that Mapogo gave you the right medicince?MAN NODSGUARD – now if they get sjambok everything is alright – they cannot go and steal again
F walks and talks FARAI – what I’ve just seen has truly shocked me, in 2004 South Africa a black man is in chains because he stole from his white employers. There’s no police involvement, there’s no sort of access to justice and this is how people are dealing with crime.
Wide as police arrive COMMThe police were keen to let us know their operations were working. They were destroying 12,000 illegal guns discovered in joburg in the last six months alone. The Commissioner Naidoo insisted that the police and not the vigilantes were leading the fight against crimeNEW SYNC:
COMM NAIDOO – We are the law, we enforce the laws and we will maintain law and order in our country. Communities need to understand that they need to support us but we cannot turn them into a vigilante force or a police service.Farai: so you are against vigilantes CommissionerNAIDOO – That’s absolutely correct we are against vigilantism.
The Commissioner was right, it is the police who are the law but the willingness of some security firms to break the law in the name of upholding security means they’re already poisoning freedoms they claim they’re protecting.
Ten years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s Johannesburg, has become one of the most violent cities in the world.Last year in South Africa there were 22,000 murders, and over 200,000 robberies…The police seem overwhelmed.And now, desperate citizens are turning to private security groups and vigilantes, who are meting out an ancient kind of justice…
TITLE: SA LawFriday
COMM – Friday night in Joburg. I’m with the Police’s Flying Squad..
FARAI PTC – The police have heard that there’s a robbery in progress in a place called Melville – and we’re just going there to back up 2 units that are already there – it’s suspected that the person may still be in the house or whatever he’s trying to rob.
COMM - .…the victim was waiting for us..
UPSOV VICTIM – it was a .38UPSOV F and COPHe robbed him of an ATM card and a cell phone then he ran away.
the suspect is believed to be still in the area, he broke into this man’s house and he took a cell phone, a cell phone, with a .38 calibre pistol.
COMM – Guns are used to steal the smallest things. So the police begin a search they send out an all points bulletin with the suspect’s description…
A man matching description from the house break earlier has been spotted trying to use a card in an ATM machine. We are rushing there now to see if it is the same person.
UPSOV COP Where in Jephie street?
F and COPCOP It’s the same suspectF you’ve got him?
F PTC so everything has been recovered so the police in about 20 minutes have recaptured the man, and they’re recovered a .38 that he used to rob a cell phone and to take away a man’s cash card. He was arrested here trying to use that cash card to take out money.
FARAI - this is it
UPSOV COP a .38 special Smith and Wesson.
COMM –Ten years after apartheid was replaced by democracy South Africa is awash with guns, crime is how many people have decided to beat poverty..
COMMBut it’s not just criminals who have guns…a few days earlier, Jan Hendrik de Wit was at home enjoying a bar-b-que…
JAN – 3 guys with balaclavas went and they pointed guns right at my heart onto my heart and the other two into my face.
COMM – His wife pressed the panic button. The robbers started to run, and Jan saw his opportunity…
JAN – I grabbed one of the guns which is very accessible
FARAI – that’s a 12 round
JAN – it’s a 12 round protector shot gun. The gun I grabbed and get out of the door and chasing people down the street – I been going this way, with a gun – like I said I’m not Rambo. Open up the door I ran out to the street. The adrenaline is pumping a lot with a gun.
FARAI –you’ve just had three guns at your head
JAN – yeah a couple of seconds ago 3 guns. When I reached a point here, I saw the guys running down hereF – in the shadows thereJAN and I was shooting at him, 3 shots and I just saw the guy was crippling like that.
COMM – He keeps a gun in every room of his house. This is the second time he’s been attacked, the first time he killed an intruder…
COMM Jan believes the government’s failure to control crime is undermining South Africa’s new democracy.
JAN – after 10 years it didn’t get better it get worse. Where are we going to start are we going to have to run around with guns like this – is that the thing that’s going to happen. Where’s our freedom now – they have been fighting for their freedom – I also want to be part of that freedom.
COMM – On the other side of the tracks, is Alexandra township – poor, built as a source of cheap labour in the apartheid days, here, the residents are just as fed up with crime. UPSOV – it was very bad. We had to do something we couldn’t just sit down and fold our arms and watch these things happening .
COMM - Bulldog, an ex-policeman, told me that the residents have set up their own patrols to deal with crime.So far four volunteers have been killed and Bulldog himself was wounded only six months ago.
UPSOV FARAI – where did they shoot you?
BULLDOG – here - on the hand here – you can see my finger
BULLDOG – I came to this place, to come and retrieve the gun, to confiscate the gun from that guy. That’s when I got shot.
FARAI – so what, you grabbed the gun and he pulled the trigger?
BULLDOG – Yeah
FARAI - he could have shot you in the head.
BULLDOG - that’s the risk that we took.
FARAI – why does the community have to do this and not the police? I see the police on the streets of Alexandra why don’t they do it?
BULLDOG – but the main thing is that the police are not all over at the same time. And then they are not there when things happen, things sometimes happen like this inside the house.
COMM I decided to see for myself what the volunteers got up to. It’s Saturday and the Orlando Pirates had been playing Kaiser Chiefs.
FARAI PTC so people will be celebrating the football score. Orlando Pirate have won one nil, there’s a huge age old rivalry between these two clubs. There’ll be drinking, there’ll be partying. Where’s there’s drinking and partying there’s often a lot of violence and crime.
Comm Bulldog took me on patrol around the streets of Alexandra..And soon enough there is blood on the floor..There’d been an incident in someone’s house…Bulldog steps in to check everything is ok..
F PTC –there’s been a fight here. We arrived here and there’s blood all over the floor – a man apparently had a knife put through his hand.
COMM - Nelson Mandela, whom everyone here calls Madiba, walked from prison over a decade ago. His long walk to freedom filled south Africans with hope. But I found that many people think the crime wave began with that walk..
FARAI – 10 years ago you had a new South Africa. Madiba said rainbow nation blah blah. Have things changed?
BETTY – nothing changed – it got worse
CHRISTINE you know what, after Madiba was released I think things goes worse it was OK before – we had apartheid but after Madiba was released everything changed, people said they were going to get everything free and it’s not like that you have to work.
COMM – The volunteers stop everyone and search for weapons, a part of their task is to remove illegal guns off the streets..
FARAI PTC – it’s not an easy thing to stop a man walking down the street of his township and say you have the powers to search him. So there’s a lot of reluctance on the part of the citizens.
COMM by end of night, the team had recovered 2 illegal hand guns, dealt with an attempted shooting, an attempted rape
BULLDOG – when we started there was a time when police couldn’t go on foot with the community cos they didn’t trust each other.
FARAI – they didn’t trust the police?
BULLDOG – but since we started in 1999, no policemen are killed in Alexandra. It’s easy for policemen - even by themselves they can drive in the township.
COMM – this is Dieplsloot a sprawling township on the edge of Johannesburg. Nearly a million people are crammed into a couple of square miles which are the setting for six killings a week.
COMM. Crime is strangling small businesses. Peter Nzamisa owns the local bottle store. It’s been broken into 4 times in the last year. The most recent break in was last night.
PETER – they went through the roof twice and went through the ceiling and as you see now the ceiling’s been broken.
COMM Peter feels that South Africa’s new constitution is too good to everyone, including the criminals..
PETER - the policemen they don’t do a nice job because they don’t have power like before. If they can change a little bit, give the police power like before then thing s will be much better because now if someone’s done a crime, the police now have got no right to hit that guy who’s done the crime.
FARAI - so you think there should be more capital punishment? You think they should be sjamboked?PETER – like before they should be a little but beaten and then they can confess.
COMM – There are security companies all over Joburg…Peter employs three – but he’s most impressed with one called MAPOGO, because of their hands on approach..
PETER – like Mapogo, if you join Mapago and you phone in, the come quicker. If you get information they go to those guys and they interrogate those guys, those guys can confess.
FARAI and do they use the sjambok?
PETER – yeah they use the sjambok.
UPSOV WILLIE – Line up!COMM – the Sjambok – a long leather whip - is the favourite tool of Willie the head of Mapogo in Deipsloot. He finds it ideal for whipping his guards into line.
UPSOV WILIE Attention. You use the right leg, the right leg. Right about turn
I/V WILLIE AND FWILLIE they should exercise like at school, like what we used to do like soldiers. Like a policeman in the force.
FARAI and they are going to protect businesses who are your members.
WILLIE – Ya, all the members who are under Mapogo, we take as our guards to there.
FARAI – so they’ll protect those businesses?
WILLIE yes
FARAI - cos those businesses have paid you money
WILLIE they’ve paid me money that is correct. They are my babies I must look after them.
WILLIE – where’s my sjambok? Where is my sjambok.
COMM - Mapogo was originally a vigilante group set up to protect the local communities from crime. Now businesses pay Mapogo around a hundred pounds a year for their security..Mapogo claim they have up to 70,000 [stress] paying members, all across South Africa. Who sign up for the robust way in which Mapogo deals with suspects.
WILLIE – this is where we give the medicine
F – what’s that Willie – You see we use the whip, give the medicine here
F – Right so you get a suspect you bring him in here
W – We bring him in here
F – You take the sjambok.
W_ We take the sjambok here we take the hose pipe, we give the medicine
F – So the medicine is basically the whipping
W- Yeah the medicine is basically the whipping. You know if somebody gets arrested either breaking into some ones property or doing something wrong it is , if he’s not given medicine he’s going to come back again
F – He’s going to do it again.
W – Yeah, if you give medicine they must get thorough medicine, but don’t overdose.
F – don’t overdose, otherwise they may die.
W – They might die or they get crippled and then you are no more sort of preventing the crime.
F - sounds like rough, rough justice
WILLIE – it’s not rough. That’s only the way we will never stop beating, if you stop beating then the value of Mapogo goes down.
What about SA’s police service ? I wanted to see what they were up against.The police in Hillbrow, the centre of Joburg, told me new year’s eve was their busiest night of the year...There is a large criminal population here, and this is the time they vent their frustrations...
PTC Its ten to midnight and it’s New Years Eve, and the police seem to have done a very good job of containing this area. It’s supposed to be so notorious..
COMM: Hillbrow’s tower blocks are filled with people throwing all manner of missiles at the police below.
PTC Here we go.. the first missiles are being thrown at the police.
Farai: I’ve got a bad feeling about this, a bad feeling about this. Keep going, faster, faster. Jesus Christ, dammit turn round, turn round now just a make a detour now. There’s the cops, there’s the cops. I don’t know where everything is coming from.
PTC It’s the middle of Hillbrow and I really don’t know what’s going on. All I know is there is a mixture of exuberance here over the new year and a real passion to do something to the South Africa police..
F; I’m trying to get out of here as soon as I can. You want us to leave the town area?
COMM As well as fireworks, there were stones,– and gunshots
F- This is too much yeah. 10 minutes past midnight 1st January 2004. These men have very kindly almost saved our lives. They pulled us out of our car and told us we cannot drive any further in Hillbrow without their protection. We’re now trying to see the best way we can get out from the centre of Johannesburg.
After a night like that I understood why it’s hard to recruit policemen – and why numbers have fallen by a third in the last decade.And when I went back to Hillbrow, I discovered yet another reason why the country’s crime figures keep soaring.
F PTC here where we are in Hillbrow, downtown, so many people Nigerians, Congolese, Zimbabweans come to get a piece of south Africa’s wealth
VOX POP 1 – African’s are dreaming to come down here and when they are coming down here they don’t find anything – you find out that they resort in crime.
VOX POP2 – those South Africans are saying that we are causing the problem in South Africa, we are selling drugs, we are doing this and we’re doing that.
FARAI – do the police hassle you?
VOX POP 3 – of course
F what do they want from you the police
VOX POP 3 – they want papers, you know.
COMM – The police say that many of the fruit stalls are a front for selling drugs…
SUPT ERASMUS – everywhere these people are sitting on the street, they’re selling fruit and cell phones and stuff, this is all a front.
FARAI – they tell me they are so hungry that they need to survive somehow.SUPT ERASMUS – they’re hungry? Yah it is quite strange that they are always hungry but hey are driving around in good vehiclesINSP HILLS – look at the cars standing hereF – these are all cars from people who live around here?COPS YEAHS
COPS JUMP OUT
Upsovt
F walk to camera COMM People around here don’t see the police, who still have a large number of white officers, as being on their side.As we drove around I noticed the police radios only seem to chatter in Africaans. They still face an old hostility borne from the days of apartheid. F PTC the other day I was down in these streets talking to immigrants and everybody telling me their problems. Today I pitch up with 2 white policemen and I’m a sell out.
MAPOGO SIGNF walks inMan being questioned COMM I got a tip off that Mapogo, the security firm I visited earlier, were holding a suspect …
F in doorway F PTC – Mapogo have got hold of a man who they’ve accused of stealing several things; a TV a generator. And they’re now interrogating him to find out if he is the thief.
Man being questioned COMM – Mapogo want him to tell them which items he sold, and which he still has.
FARAI in office with interog behind FARAI PTC well according to the private investigator, Ricardo, the man is lying, he hasn’t given up the TV and the generator and all the things that he’s stolen. So they’re trying to find out how they can best get the truth out of him.
Man fold shambok COMM Suddenly, a shambok appeared…Amon had worked as a gardener..He desperately pleaded that all he’d taken were two double AA batteries, anything else that had been stolen had nothing to do with him..
F talks to man FARAI – how do you feel about this?Do you think you deserve the sjambokMAN SHAKES HEADIt’s a strange kind of justice.
FARAI – could he take you guys to the police for assault?GUARD – if he likes.FARAI but you think he’s guilty?GUARD – yes
Man at tableThen F walks out of office COMM – It is Mapogo’s clients who have asked for Amon to be interrogated.. in the Mapogo way..the police were not informed.
F PTC FARAI PTC – so what’s going on in here is a really, really strange situation. You’ve got Mapogo, this so called community protecting force, who are interrogating a suspect who happens to be working for one of their clients, who the client suspects of having stolen something. It’s a massive conundrum. And at the same time the police are nowhere to be found.
GVs driving COMM I was curious to meet the people who had asked for Amon the suspected thief to be picked up…
GV’s house and Mapogo sign COMM Several miles out of Joburg, I met Mary-Ann…she’d been in this house for 5 months and lost a computer, a TV, and construction tools
Walk and talk UPSOV – F and Mary-AnnF - How many times have you been robbed here ?Mary-Ann – 5 times – they robbed us there and then they came down to the cottage here.
Walk and talk COMM– after the fourth time they decided to lay a trap – Mary-Ann and her hustband installed hidden camera.
TOWARDS COMPUTER FARAI – so basically you have cameras everywhere?Mary-Ann – it happened yesterday at just after 10, cos we went to the shop, he gave us five minutes and then he went about his business.FARAI – good God. Do you know what Mapogo did to him when he went to their offices?Mary-Ann – No.FARAI – they wallaped him, you know that? They sjamboked him.Mary-Ann – well I think they must have, because apparently he told them plenty.
FARAI – so do you think that’s a good way of dealing with these criminals?Mary-Ann - it’s a better way than dealing with it any other way. FARAI – they only understand the sjambok.Mary-Ann – that’s the only way, the only way they talk. You see if you tell the police they’ll take him in, they’ll ask him a couple of questions and they’ll let him out the next day.FARAI – and now because he’s been beaten he’s given up the information.Mary-Ann– he’s given the information, the police would not have found that out.
DRIVEInto compound COMM – before I left SA, I wanted to check up on Amon, the man Mapogo had been holding – and was surprised to learn that they were still holding him 4 days after his “citizen’s arrest”
F walks down track FARAI PTC – we’ve just arrived back at Mapogo’s headquarters and we hear that a man we saw being beaten last time we were here, has received some more medicine as Mapogo call it and now he’s .. . they fear here that they may have over done his correctional punishment.
Man in chainsMeets up with Willie FARAI - so on Saturday, when we came to see you did you beat him up again.WILL – ya, he got some more medicineFARAI – after we left?WILLIE – that’s correct.FARAI - I spoke to one of you people today and they said that you are going to keep him here until he gets better.WILLIE – that’s correct.FARAI – why can’t you take him now?WILLIE – no no we can’t take him nowFARAI why because the police will sayWILLIE .. .. that’s overdosing
FARAI walks to manShots of bloody T shirt FARAI – how are you man, do you remember me – I came on Saturday – you were wearing overalls. Do you remember?The beating you got was it very painful?MAN SPEAKSF – they beat him too much and he has a pain in his body and he’s bleading inhis buttocks is that right?MAN SPEAKSF – on your pitishoo?
FARAI – what do you want to do now? Do you want to stay with Mapogo or do you want to got to the police?MAN SPEAKSF – you don’t want to go to the police? You think that Mapogo gave you the right medicince?MAN NODSGUARD – now if they get sjambok everything is alright – they cannot go and steal again
F walks and talks FARAI – what I’ve just seen has truly shocked me, in 2004 South Africa a black man is in chains because he stole from his white employers. There’s no police involvement, there’s no sort of access to justice and this is how people are dealing with crime.
Wide as police arrive COMMThe police were keen to let us know their operations were working. They were destroying 12,000 illegal guns discovered in joburg in the last six months alone. The Commissioner Naidoo insisted that the police and not the vigilantes were leading the fight against crimeNEW SYNC:
COMM NAIDOO – We are the law, we enforce the laws and we will maintain law and order in our country. Communities need to understand that they need to support us but we cannot turn them into a vigilante force or a police service.Farai: so you are against vigilantes CommissionerNAIDOO – That’s absolutely correct we are against vigilantism.
The Commissioner was right, it is the police who are the law but the willingness of some security firms to break the law in the name of upholding security means they’re already poisoning freedoms they claim they’re protecting.