Free bail for man ‘beaten by cops’

A NYANGA mother spent five hours frantically running between township police stations searching for her son after being told he had allegedly been assaulted in the street by two Nyanga officers.

“I thought he might be dying and I couldn’t help him,” said Nontsikelo Koyana, 54, whose ordeal began at around 7am last week Wednesday when her son’s girlfriend came running to her house.

“She was desperate. She told me, ‘Mummy, Mummy, the police have hurt Thando.’ I dressed quickly and went straight to Nyanga police station. But he wasn’t there.”

During her two-hour wait there, Koyana was eventually told her son was being held in Philippi. By then, she was frantic as she had seen a bystander’s video of her son’s arrest.

“He was crying in the video,” she said, struggling to keep her composure. “I thought, ‘My God, what have they done to my son?’ It was terrible.”

After being given the run-around at various police stations, Koyana eventually found her son at around 1pm leaving KTC Day Hospital in Gugulethu with police.

The video of Thando’s arrest shows two cops trying to manhandle him into the back of their van. He is resisting them.

In the background, a bystander can be heard berating the cops in Xhosa not to beat their suspect.

The cops tell onlookers that they are not beating him and one retorts: “Then why is he bleeding?”

Handyman Luthando “Thando” Frans, 36, said he had been walking down Second Ave in Nyanga just after 6.30am last Wednesday to collect his child from his girlfriend when the police van sped through a pedestrian crossing.

“I was trying to help some young kids trying to cross the road so I shouted at the cops for speeding. They reversed and told me that I couldn’t tell them what to do because I wasn’t a traffic cop.

“Both of them then started beating me and kicked me to the ground without any explanation. That’s when they broke my arm.

“They wouldn’t stop. They were angry and behaving like animals and I thought, these guys are going to kill me,” he said.

After some time, the cops drove him to KTC Day Hospital.

Following treatment he was held in Nyanga police cells until last Friday, when he appeared in Fezeka Community Court charged with crimen injuria, common assault and intimidation and later released on free bail.

Frans is due back in court on February 21.

SAPS referred enquiries to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, who are yet to respond.