TC

Vision

Sound

36.37.00

V/O: Nighttime in Richmond.  It is so dark here the killers strike as though they are invisible.  For the people living amongst these hills, darkness has become the enemy.

37.04.

Shot of police in vehicles

V/O: When night falls the police move only in groups, and travel within the safety of armoured vehicles.

Shot of people grieving

V/O: Covered against the cold of Quasolatar midlands, people gather to pray for the dead - to mourn and to share their grief.

37.01

Daybreak

V/O: Day breaks over Muswanzeni, which means the place of the Swazis. Neighbours, families and friends of the Porswa family gather.

Wailing women

V/O: Police tape mark the footprints of last night's killers.

38.08

Coffins

The night before, shortly after supper, the pregnant Tulilani her husband and two little boys were killed in their beds. Down the road Tulanitola was also gunned down.  To die in Richmond today is not to die as a man woman or child with a name - you die as a member of either The United Democratic Front or the African National Congress.  Even to die here is regarded a political act.

38.48

Funeral procession

V/O: If you die on the left hand side of the only tar road that runs through the Richmond Valley, Sifiso Nkabinde, Vaton Omesa and Ruth Myer will mourn at your vigil.

39.03

Crowds watching

Whilst to be mowed down on the right hand side will bring the ANC leadership to your grave.

39.16

Today the ANC is burying Mechi Pearli, Sibani Madondo, Wanda Miyendi, Simpiwin Kamarlo, Sandeli Lormo, Googan Korbo, Mandla Kumarlo, Toby Kassie Kamarlo, Rowin Bortwi, Mutzi Hadebi.

Woman singing

40.27

V/O: A day later, Kumbeselum Tola was buried by the UDM on the other side.

40.56

Shot of valley

V/O: Richmond is a valley surrounded by acres and acres of forest and sugar cane. About 3,000 whites live here, some 65,000 black people. A road runs through it.  To the left is Ndaleni, the ANC stronghold. On the other side of the tar road, Magoda which means the place of nuts. Whichever political party joins, Magoda residents will follow. Violence is no newcomer to this place; it started a long time ago. First during the fight against the Pretoria appointed inkosi Majozi and in the eighties the fighting between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the United Democratic Front claimed an estimated 23,000 lives in this Province.  Hundreds of people from Richmond died in this period

41.48

Youths on front line

In the last couple of months over 80 people were killed here, in recent days some 30 died in two weeks. On this home made front line ANC youths keep a look out for the enemy. The enemy is not, like a couple of years ago, the police or the army.  There on the other side of the road is the enemy - neighbours, friends, even family members. These youngsters are not the only ones watching - the sign warns that God's eye will see what bad you do to others and tomorrow it will be you. 20,000 people have left the area, now people are fleeing again.

42.41

Shot of houses

The area between Ndaleni and Magoda is a no-mans land.  An eerie silence hangs amongst the destroyed houses and empty houses here.

43.07

Pat Hlazlya Matola outside his home

Pat Hlazlya Matola  is an ANC youth league member - he used to live in this part of Ndaleni

Pat:  This is my home but no one is staying here at the moment. There's no use building a better house if people will be killed or have to leave it at any stage.  It's only that it's by the edge, like the road separates the two sides. It's easy for them to creep and kill people here - it has happened - so that's why people are running away from this place.

43.42

Pat by road.

Pat: You lead an abnormal life I would say.  For people who live outside Dalani they wonder why these people are always dusty - they are always moving around  - in the afternoons they move away from their homes and in the mornings they come back to their homes with luggage.  So it seems as if the whole community is abnormal I would say.

44.08

shots of people moving their belongings.

V/O: Life has become so abnormal that these people who are leaving their homes were too scared to even speak to us "Who knows", they said," the next to be gunned down while sleeping might be them."  That's why they are leaving.

Van driving off

44.30

Women going to the town hall.

V/O: When the night falls, women and children walk miles to the town hall, hoping to escape being massacred in their homes.

For sale signs

Black people are not the only ones who want to run away though.  Recently 8 people were gunned down in a tavern on the main road of Richmond. For the whites this was too close for comfort.

45.05

Bar owner Lynette Swanepoel

Bar in Richmond

 Bar owner Lynette Swanepoel: They are too scared to speak.  They come in the bar and it's like they drink but you can see they're scared. They watch the door every time they hear a car or someone walks in the door and all their eyes go to the door. Yeah, they are very scared. Some people want to leave, some people want to stay and try and make it work.  Like I say they are very quiet really, but they're very scared.

45.45

V/O: To know Richmond is to know this man. To understand this place is to be one step ahead of him.

Shot of Nkabinde

45.59

Paulos Vezi

IFP Supporter

Vezi: Nkabinde is an intelligent and wonderful man.  People say he is a thug.  I haven't seen that.

Pat

Pat: I think he is power hungry - that's the only term I could use - that he is power hungry. He wants everything to be under his control.

46.18

Phillip Powell

Inkatha Freedom Party

Powell: Sifiso Nkabinde was the most formidable opponent of the IFP in the midlands.

Dr Zweli Mkhize

African National Congress

Mkhize: I've worked with enough of them in my life so I know they exist and that you can't get a situation where there is no infiltration.

46.31

Siphiwe Henry Gwamanda

United Democratic Front

Gwamanda: Nkabinde is a man of truth - we will follow him no matter what.  We are supporting am man of truth.

Montlantla Clarabell,

Nkabinde's Wife

Montlantla Clarabell: He's clever, he's loving, he's tender. He really knows how to look after us. He's got a soft spot in his chest.

46.58

Andrew Ragavaloo

Mayor of Richmond

Ragavaloo: The man is greedy, he's power hungry. He wants to be able to walk down the street and people must bow down to him.

47.07

Nkabinde

V/O: Who is Sifiso Nkabinde?  He used to be the ANC's crown prince in the 1980's.  He was Harry Gualas right hand man.  They loved him because he was a fearless soldier. A formidable and popular leader. 

But then he was branded a spy for the previous government's security forces. The unforgivable sin - labelled an impimpy by his former comrades. Last year he was arrested and charged with murdering 18 people.

 Earlier this year he was acquitted and immediately joined Bunta Holomeyser and Ruth Myers, United Democratic Movement.

48.01

Shot of Nkabinde

Now Nkabinde is untouchable, unrepentant, fearless, arrogant.

48.11

Sifiso Nkabinde

Sifiso Nkabinde: So I am saying if you talk about Richmond you talk about Nkabinde because it is Nkabinde who made this Richmond up to what it is. No one else.

48.21

Shot of Nkabinde's Wife

V/O Nkabinde is married to Montlantla Clarabell. They have four children. He has no intention of taking his family away from Nagoda.

48.35

Shot of Nkabinde

V/O He was born here and he will die here he says.

48.41

Sifiso Nkabinde

Sifiso Nkabinde: When my time is up it will be up, so I have got nothing to fear I cannot really lock myself in the room because I am scared they will kill me. If my time is up it will be up because I believe when I came into this world God had plans for me.

48.56

Shot of Nkabinde and supporters

For some people Sifiso Nkabinde is not only a politician.

49.08

Three Men

These three men were caught after having stolen and slaughtered a cow.

49.27

Nkabinde's house

Even though Nkabinde was not home at the time, angry residents took the culprits to his house for him to decide their fate.

49.47

Shot of Rifle and police

As controversial as Sifiso Nkabinde is in the midlands so are the police. When Nkabinde was acquitted the presiding judge said that he was the single most untouched witness in the trial. The police failed dismally to present a watertight case against him. Now they are looking for new scapegoats.

50.08

Shots of Policemen

The minister of safety and security and the police commissioner fingered eight policemen. They are now being transferred from Richmond. Permission to speak to any policemen was denied. As one senior investigating officer said

50.22

Shot of Helicopter

V/o: If you speak about Sifiso Nkabinde or the violence in this area you will either get transferred, fired from the police force or accused of being involved in the violence".

50.33

Man out of Helicopter

50.37

Supt. Henry Budram

SAPS Media Liaison Officer

V/O Only the media Liaison officer was allowed to speak.

Budram:  If every policeman has to speak to you then when is he going to do his job.

Interviewer: There's been very strong allegations made in the media by various people, including the police, that some of the local policemen in Richmond are involved in the violence. Can you give me any evidence of that?

Budram: I think that at this stage it is more of a perception and one must also take note that the ministers office dealt with this directly at this point in time the minister is busy addressing this problem. I think the minister said there is no conclusive evidence to substantiate what has been said that certain policemen are involved in the crime here or are presumed to be defending the violence here.

51.30

Interviewer: So these policemen are getting transferred because of a perception, not because of hard facts.

51.35

Supt. Henry Budram

SAPS Media Liaison Officer

Budram: Well at the end of the day you know if to improve efficiency in the South African police service then certain things have to be done and one of them being to transfer people if it could improve efficiency and at the end of the day bring back the image of the South African Police service this must be done.

51.51

Shot of Soldiers

Interviewer:  You believe that this is politics being played out here through the barrel of a gun?

51.57

Supt. Henry Budram

SAPS Media Liaison Officer

Budram: Well I can mention that the exact mode of all these killings has not been established yet it could be linked to the ongoing political conflict in this area.

52.07

Shot of House

V/O With this in mind eight hundred policemen recently conducted a search operation in Magoda and Ndaleni.

52.15

Inside House

All they found were three home made guns a few bags of dacha and a couple of cartridges. Yet it was called a successful public relations exercise.

52.31

Shots of Police

If the violence in Richmond is political, it has nothing to do with politics as we know it. Rather like in Godfather movies, political role players position their bodyguards and then speculate about who is killing who.

52.48

Andrew Ragavaloo

Mayor of Richmond

Ragavaloo: We are basically confused about the criminality that is being unleashed in the Richmond area since May 1997. As members of the community we find it both frightening, traumatic and confusing that people who want to ferment violence in the Richmond area would unleash this kind of servity that we are experiencing.

53.10

Interviewer: You've relayed that it is criminal. So there's no politics involved here?

53.14

Ragavaloo: Oh well to be honest with you there is no conflict between any political party. There have been rumours that people have said there has been conflict between the UDM and the ANC. This basically has to be denied because there is no open conflict between any two political parties.

53.32

Siphiwe Henry Gwamanda

United Democratic Front

Gwamanda: These deaths can't be associated with political parties. The criminals are amongst the political parties existing here.

53.45

Pat

Pat: Though one can not say who is busy hunting for the keepers lives at night but we all know that those criminals come from a certain side of the community.

53.59

Interviewer: What side?

54.01

Pat: They are coming from the side which is thought to be a UDM side.

54.07

Interviewer: The mayor of the town said it's criminal. I haven't seen anybody stealing anything from any dead person yet. What is happening here?

54.14

Phillip Powell, IFP

Powell: Well I think that the kind of argument which the mayor and ANC leaders are using to justify their refusal to talk to the UDM is a one way street. They are saying essentially that they don't need to talk to the UDM because the violence is being perpetrated by criminal elements.

54.41

Dr Zweli Mkhize, ANC

Mkhize: What we have here is that people are asleep and no one knows about their political affiliation or their general activities, their children, their women. They are defenceless, they are innocent and somebody wakes up at night comes into their house bangs their doors in, opens them shoots them and kills them. And they are killed with kind of brutality...the kind of which reminds us of what used to happen in ‘1993, 92, 93, 94... in Hauteng where you find somebody just walks into the train opens fire and kills a lot of people he throws people out of the train and so on. You could ask me whether that is criminal or political, it is both.

55.30

Paulos Vezi

IFP Supporter

Vezi: There's a lot of personal hatred. One person hates another. He uses politics to kill and the political party is blamed.

55.40

Nkabinde

V/O I asked Nkabinde whether he has a clean conscious.

55.44

Nkabinde: I still maintain that if I was guilty of any sort or any involvement in violence in this area then definitely I would be rotting in prison. The fact that I am out is an indication that I am walking with a very clean conscious and my head very tall.

55.58

Nkabinde

Interviewer: You came out of prison, the violence started again please explain that to me what does that mean.

56.03

Nkabinde: I think that is not correct that when I was in prison that things were quiet in Richmond. That is very much far from the truth I feel it is a matter of record that when I was in prison 15 people died in Richmond.

56.17

Dr Zweli Mkhize

ANC

Mkhize: Why is it that all of a sudden that the first day Nkabinde gets released  all of a sudden there are deaths

56.22

Nkabinde

Nkabinde: My argument is how did they know by then that there would be violence they could acquit it.

56.27

Interviewer: The image you have given me of you is one of an angel.

56.35

I am not an angel. Angels are only in heaven.

56.37

Shot of hut

(women singing)

V/O In this small community without angels people are literally getting away with murder.

56.43

Soldier

V/O Faced with this murkiness and confusion blaming a third force with links to the security forces is maybe the easiest option

56.48

Van and countryside

but not necessarily the correct one.

56.52

End

00.57.08

Children and women

If Sifiso Nkabinde is involved in the violence then the police the Mayor and all the politicians in KwaZulu-Natal have failed the residents of Richmond.

Camera - Gugu Radebe

Editor - Julian Peries

Producer - Pearlie Joubert