By Simon Nare
Former KwaZulu-Natal Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigator Sharmila Williams has told the Nkabinde Inquiry how the long-disbanded Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit unlawfully and on flimsy grounds allegedly detained taxi operators and assaulted them while in police custody.
Williams told the inquiry, which is probing the fitness of South Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Andrew Chauke’s fitness to hold office, that in some instances the unit members would alter magistrate warrants to effect the unlawful arrests and detentions.
The inquiry, chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Bess Nkabinde, twice had to briefly adjourn to allow Williams to compose herself after she broke down while relaying the alleged assaults.
Williams testified that the Cato Manor unit’s alleged detention of taxi operators, particularly those from Maphumulo, became increasingly alarming as it became clear the practice would continue, despite repeated calls by lawyers for the unit to be investigated.
She told the panel she could not say why the complaints, which were raised by lawyers of some of the taxi operators, were not investigated.
Williams testified that in one case, taxi operators were arrested for the murder of a police officer, despite evidence indicating they were already in custody at the time of the killing. In a letter from the operators’ lawyers that she read into the record, the attorneys said their clients were denied access to legal representation while detained.
“After being interrogated and assaulted, our clients were marched into the Cato Manor police cells and only managed to contact us that night through members of their family,” read the letter.
The letter said that after consultation with their clients, they eventually demanded that the matter be investigated through letters forwarded to the head of the unit, the senior magistrate, and the control prosecutor.
In the letter, the lawyers raised concerns that the unit members had taken the law into their own hands, and “committed a series of offences by altering the detention warrant to suit their own hands”.
Williams told the inquiry that taking the law into one’s own hands meant one was acting like a criminal.
She said that in a related but separate incident, Moses Sipho Dlamini handed himself over to Cato Manor police on August 27, 2008, on the understanding that he would be questioned as a witness about the murder of the police officer for which the taxi operators had been detained.
Dlamini was an employee of the taxi violence unit that provided protection to certain members of the Maphumulo Taxi Association. Instead, Dlamini was detained as a suspect in the murder and was issued a written detention notice and spent the night in the police cells.
She said the following day, Dlamini was taken to the Cato Manor unit, where he was allegedly interrogated and severely assaulted, and sustained open wounds to his wrists from handcuffs and a burst eardrum from slapping.
“Dlamini was only released after extensive interrogation and abuse,” she read from the lawyer’s letter.
A further two members of the same taxi association were arrested shortly after the release of Dlamini, and they allegedly suffered a similar fate.
William’s testimony since she started with her evidence in chief about the alleged conduct of the Cato Manor unit is consistent with evidence from other witnesses who have testified about scene tampering, and how officers attached to the unit allegedly shot taxi operators linked to the Maphumulo Taxi Association.
Several witnesses, including former KwaZulu-Natal Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Moipone Noko, have testified that unit members would hunt down taxi operators, shoot them, and claim self-defence.
The inquiry has also heard allegations that unit members were hired by a rival taxi association in Stanger and paid R10,000 per killing.
The officers were allegedly rewarded by the police service for quelling taxi violence in the area.
INSIDE POLITICS
