Parliament, Cape Town – Several high-ranking police officials are on a list of officers with criminal records, Parliament’s police portfolio committee heard on Wednesday.

An audit, which only covered the period prior to January 2010, found 1448 officers had criminal offences, SA Police Service acting deputy national commissioner for human resource development Nkrumah Mazibuko told MPs.

The audit was conducted to find out how many officers with criminal records remained in the service’s employ.

MPs shook their heads in disbelief after Mazibuko was pushed to list the ranks of the convicted officers. They included a major-general, 10 brigadiers, 21 colonels, 10 majors, 43 lieutenant-colonels, 163 captains, 84 lieutenants, 716 warrant officers, 267 sergeants, 129 constables, and two personnel officers.

Most of the officers were convicted after joining the service, and none had been dismissed as yet.

“These people are subjected to disciplinary process and then they take the matter up on appeal, and we get an order to reinstate the person,” Mazibuko said.

Police members convicted and jailed were automatically fired.

“If that person appeals the sentence… and he gets the sentence reduced maybe to a suspended one by a criminal court, then in terms of our own (police) act such a person is entitled to apply for reinstatement.”

MPS said it was unacceptable that police disciplinary procedures were “a mess”.

“I thought the requirement of employment is that you should be criminal record free. You are now getting involved with whether a person is sentenced to jail or fined and that’s not the issue,” Cope MP Mluleki George said.

“The issue is if a person is found guilty in a court of law it means he has a criminal record. So why are they keeping you in the service if that’s what your employment criteria says?”

Mazibuko conceded the police’s capacity to deal with convicts in their own ranks was not what it should be. Police management was trying to overhaul the disciplinary regime to deal with the problem.

It intended establishing a board of fitness to determine if officers with criminal records should remain on duty.

MPs were not happy with the responses. Some insisted on immediate action against the 1448 officers.

“I share the committee’s concerns that we are expected to, and South Africa is expected to, sit back and accept that 1448 identified criminals must still be paid for another year with taxpayer’s money, must still carry a firearm, and must still wear the blue which should be worn with pride,” committee chairwoman Annelize van Wyk said.

Sapa

Pietermaritzburg – A Verulam man stabbed his mother to death after she scolded him for drinking and reneged on a promise to give him money, he told the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Wednesday.

Thandaxolo Khumalo, 27, said he was angry, went to his mother’s kitchen and fetched a knife which he used to stab her several times on a day in July this year.

He left his fatally injured mother, Thokozile Khumalo, 70, on the floor of her house and fled when he realised what he had done, he said. She died later. He tried to hide clues to his actions by burning his bloodied clothes.

Khumalo said he acted out of anger. According to the post-mortem report she was stabbed in both lungs, her liver, face, and upper arm. She also had bruises on her face.

Acting Judge Enthias Xolo convicted him of the murder.

Sentencing procedures start on Thursday.

Sapa

Johannesburg – The Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) Youth will join a ceremony commemorating the 16 August Marikana shootings, it said on Wednesday.

Friday marks the first anniversary of the shootings at the Lonmin platinum mine, outside Rustenburg in the North West, where 34 people, almost all striking miners, were killed in a clash with police.

Ten people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed in strike-related unrest the preceding week.

Azapo Youth leader Amukelani Ngobeni said the organisation believed the incident signalled a time for change.

“Just like the killings of Andries Tatane, Emido [Mido] Macia, and [many] other victims of our anti-black police brutality, the killings of black workers in Marikana by the [African National Congress’s] police is more than sufficient evidence for our people to rise up and work together, intensify our struggle for the removal of this ruthless and careless ANC government,” said Ngobeni.

Tatane died after being shot with rubber bullets during a service delivery protest in Ficksburg in 2011.

Macia, a Mozambican national, died in February in police cells in Daveyton. Before that, he was filmed tied to the back of a police van and dragged along the street.

Ngobeni called on the country to support Azapo Youth’s call to have 16 August declared “national anti-police brutality day”.

– SAPA

Pietermaritzburg – An Emergency Medical Rescue Services (EMRS) manager tried to stop a deadly KwaZulu-Natal Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) fitness test, an inquiry in Pietermaritzburg heard on Wednesday.

“She [transport department official Sindi Zwane] said they do not take orders from doctors,” EMRS sub-district manager Sibusiso Dlamini said.

“She said she would consult the MEC, everything that was going on was in their hands.”

He was testifying before a commission of inquiry probing the deaths of eight people, who took part in a 4km run at the city’s Harry Gwala Stadium. He became emotional while giving evidence and cried when talking about what happened at the meeting.

Dlamini said he tried to stop the fitness test on the first day, 27 December, at a meeting between EMRS and transport department officials at 14:30. This was because many of the participants had collapsed and local hospitals were overflowing.

The test formed part of a fitness test for RTI job applicants. More than 34 000 people qualified to apply for 90 advertised RTI trainee posts.

Of these, 15 600 attended a fitness test on 27 December, and a similar number on 28 December.

“After the meeting I left, went to sit down next to the gate and cried,” Dlamini said.

“What was painful is that most of the runners were black, our people.”

At the meeting, some people agreed the test should be stopped, but others disagreed as they felt that the process had already started, he said.

Dlamini said an argument in favour of continuing was that some people had come from afar. He said things were chaotic when the test resumed.

“When groups had to take off at the gate, some people fell because they were pushing each other.”

He described the participants as being dehydrated, deluded, and hysterical.

“Others were doing things that were not understandable. They were pulling their hair and taking off their clothes,” Dlamini said.

– SAPA

Bloemfontein – Four men have been arrested for the murder of an Oranjeville woman, Free State police said on Wednesday.

Constable Peter Kareli said police followed up information provided by residents after the murder of Vivian Ponte, in her late fifties.

She was found dead, with her hands and feet bound behind her back, in her house in Oranjeville, where she lived alone.

Kareli said police investigated after noticing the house door open and burn marks around one of the windows. Upon entering they found Ponte’s body in a burned bedroom. She had bruises on her head and body.

Investigators seized cutlery, jewellery, and other personal items belonging to Ponte in the men’s possession when they were arrested on Tuesday.

Kareli said the men, aged between 23 and 27, from Metsimaholo at Oranjeville, were arrested at a house pointed out to police.

They were expected to appear in court on Thursday on charges of murder, robbery, and arson.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The African People’s Convention (APC) will join the Marikana shootings commemoration ceremony on Friday, the party said.

“The APC is of the view that this commemoration should not focus on mineworkers who died during this Marikana incident, but all those who lost their lives,” APC leader Themba Godi said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The killings in Marikana have not stopped since last year, as there are many people that have been killed.”

Friday marks the first anniversary of the shootings at the mine, outside Rustenburg in the North West.

Thirty-four miners were killed on 16 August when police fired on them while trying to disperse them from a hill where they had gathered.

Ten people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed in strike-related unrest during the preceding week.

Godi said nothing had changed since the shootings.

Workers’ living conditions and wages were still the same, as were the living conditions of local residents.

The party called for people living in mining areas to have shares in the companies operating the mines.

Promoting peace

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) has invited the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to its commemoration ceremony on Friday, in a bid to promote peace.

The two unions have struggled for dominance in the Rustenburg platinum belt since before the shootings.

Amcu members have accused the NUM of overly close ties with government and mining companies.

At least 12 people linked to Lonmin’s Marikana mine have been killed over the past year, eight of them prominent union members, according to an AFP tally.

Godi condemned violence and intimidation of miners.

“The APC calls for industrial peace and calmness in the mining sector and urges all stakeholders to go back to the negotiating table, and resolve their differences in a peaceful manner in the best interest of their members and the general workers.”

“The APC calls for industrial peace and calmness in the mining sector and urges all stakeholders to go back to the negotiating table and resolve their differences in a peaceful manner in the best interest of their members and the general workers.”

– SAPA

Rustenburg – Peace in the North West mining areas cannot be postponed anymore, Rustenburg mayor Mpho Khunou said on Wednesday.

“All of us have a role to play to ensure peace. We cannot leave this aspect to the SA Police Service alone,” he said at the launch of the Mine Crime Combating Forum.

Many people had been killed in the Rustenburg platinum belt since the Marikana shootings in August last year.

“A year after the Marikana tragedy lives are still being lost.”

A planned Marikana commemoration rally on Friday should be used to restore peace and stability in the mines, and not used to instigate violence, Khunou said.

The forum aims to restore peace and stability in the mines.

The forum would operate in Rustenburg, Klerksdorp, and Brits, Maj-Gen Patrick Aseneng of the North West police said.

Mining companies and trade unions formed part of the forum.

Friday marks a year since 34 people, almost all miners, were shot dead in a clash with police, at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in the North West. Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed in the preceding week.

Khonou said the broader Rustenburg community should draw lessons from the tragedy.

“The mining sector plays a role in economic growth. It employs our people. We need a lasting peace in the area,” he said.

At the launch, a video was played showing police confiscating knobkerries, pangas, iron rods and sticks hidden under beds during a recent raid at hostels in Marikana.

They also found dagga wrapped in newspapers and hidden in gumboots miners wore as part of their work gear.

Police Minister Nathi Mthetwa was expected to officially launch the forum.

Sapa

Pretoria –

Courtroom D of the Pretoria North District Court was packed on Wednesday as family and friends waited for the bail application of four men accused of murdering Gauteng policeman Maj-Gen Tirhani Maswanganyi to start.

Nditsheni Daniel Nefolovhodwe, 39, Roger Godfrey Moseki, 33, Tshepo Mosai, 30, and Ndaedzo Isaac Vele, 29, face charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, and driving a vehicle without the owner’s permission.

Maswanganyi’s body was found on June 17 in a field near Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, with his hands and feet bound.

A police patrol first found his Isuzu bakkie abandoned next to the R101. A police uniform and a police identification card were in the car.

His widow Shereen Maswanganyi sat in the front row of the public gallery wearing a black jacket.

Around 10 members of the police’s tactical response unit were inside the court, three of them heavily armed.

Maswanganyi was the police’s Johannesburg cluster commander. – Sapa

Cape Town – It was a heartbreaking scene as a Chinese shopkeeper’s wife wept openly after his death at the hands of gunmen on Tuesday.

Two unknown males armed with a firearm entered a shop in Mfuleni and chased the wife of the shop owner with the firearm, police said.

“The suspects returned and fatally shot her 32-year-old husband several times and fled the scene on foot,” Western Cape police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said.
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Cape Town – Pupils at New Eisleben Secondary School stoned a Cape Argus photographer’s vehicle on Wednesday morning during violent protests against the school’s principal.

Hundreds of pupils protested outside and inside the school premises this morning. Garbage was dumped in the school’s corridors.

Attempts at contacting the principal were unsuccessful – his office phone went unanswered.
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