Hostel a ‘one-stop assassin shop’
THE MOERANE Commission investigating political killings in KwaZuluNatal has heard that Durban south’s notorious Glebelands Hostel is a haven for hitmen who operate throughout the province.
Testifying upon resumption of the commission after a month’s recess, human rights activist Vanessa Burger said that according to her research, hitmen based at the hostel were used throughout KwaZulu-Natal as killers for hire.
“There are 89 killings in the province that can be traced back to hitmen based at Glebelands hostel,” from 2014 to date, she said. “Anyone who wants someone taken out, Glebelands is the place to go,” she said. Burger, a graphic designer by trade, is a well-known figure at KwaZulu-Natal hostels, where she has been an activist for justice for years.
Her testimony included a map she had designed that plotted murders in the province thought to have been connected to Glebeland’s hitmen, murders that were “probably as a result of Glebelands hitmen” and those socio-economically affected as a result of the killings.
Evidence leader for the commission, advocate Bheki Manyathi, was questioning Burger. He said four witnesses who had testified before the commission at its first sitting had agreed that hitmen based at Glebelands were used throughout the province.
Manyathi said those witnesses had testified that the killings in the province and Glebelands were a result of “politics, power, financial enrichment, criminality (warlords/hitmen) and failures on the parts of the municipality, SAPS and Durban metro police”.
Burger agreed, and then traced a harrowing picture of a patronage network that allegedly included politicians, prosecutors and police. Glebelands Hostel is a sprawling complex in uMlazi that consists of 71 blocks and about 22 000 residents. Burger said that while the newer blocks were family units, the medium and older blocks housed up to 10 people per room, “at least”. The rooms are designed to accommodate four people.
Besides hitmen, the hostel is known to be a haven for criminals who extort money from residents and taxi owners. Burger said money obtained during these “collections” enabled them to buy weapons, including police rifles, which were used in politically linked violence and other criminal acts.
“There are collections going on in the older blocks where residents are forced at gunpoint and threatened with eviction if they don’t give various amounts of money,” she said. The hearing ends on Friday.
The commission was established in October to investigate political killings in the province since 2011.