Police take bribes from artisanal
The police say that allegations of complicity by some officers in the service are common and called for people to come forward with evidence
Apolice vehicle swoops down a quiet street in West Village, Krugersdorp, in Gauteng, slowing as it passes a group of residents. “Did you get the licence plate?” asks Andre Shannon, the vice-chair of the West Village Community Forum, as he watches it move off.
Last week, Shannon says, locals recorded what they allege was a police officer taking a bribe. Now, they want to determine if this same police vehicle was involved.
Less than half a kilometre away is a horrific crime scene, the barren North Sands mine dump where eight women were gang-raped and robbed at gunpoint, allegedly by illegal artisanal miners, late last month.
For years, the settlement has been a hotspot of artisanal gold mining in the abandoned, derelict mines that encircle its roughly 500 households.
Shannon attributes the rampant crime wave in West Village in the past seven years to criminals involved in illegal artisanal mining.
“The unfortunate part is that this is not something that happened now,” he says, of the gang rape.
“We’ve been reporting this for years — rapes and murders from these zama zama gangs. … The police don’t listen. We knew this was going to happen because it’s happening all the time here … Now, that it’s people from somewhere else, it’s highlighted. Kagiso is sitting with the problem, Randfontein is sitting with the problem, Bekkersdal is sitting with the problem, even Magalies is sitting with the problem.”
In a show of force in the past week, a police crackdown has seen hundreds of artisanal miners arrested in the area, while West Rand residents have taken to the streets to hunt them down. Police Minister Bheki Cele has promised the deployment of special police units to clamp down on illegal artisanal mining.
Shannon says the residents of West Village have a self-imposed curfew. “At 6pm, you lock yourself in and don’t go outside at night … After 8pm, the police are not coming and there’s no use calling them … In the last three weeks, one lady was shot through the jaw and another lady is lying in Leratong Hospital after she was shot in the chest twice. These are not exceptions.”
There is widespread distrust of the police in the area.
“If you listened to what was said at the crime imbizos on the weekend, everybody is complaining about police corruption. Over here, they take bribes openly from the zama zamas, it’s not even a secret,” Shannon says.
“Everybody has lost faith in the police … In the same instance, there might be good police officers but I think they’re also afraid of what might happen to them.”
According to a News24 report, Cele told residents at one imbizo: “It is painful when people complain about corrupt police officers. Most are doing their job. Unfortunately, a few are tarnishing the image of the entire police service. Police officers
need to know they are the face of the nation.”
Steven Malaka*, another resident of West Village, also says he has sent video evidence of alleged police corruption to local police. “They ask you, ‘Who are those police? If you don’t know them there’s nothing we can do’. They’ve got fleet numbers, registration numbers, they would know exactly who is using that car, but nothing happens.”
On Thursday, the day after the last police raid in West Village, “we saw them taking brown envelopes”, Malaka claimed. “Some officers are working day and night, having sleepless nights while other guys are enjoying waking up and going to collect extra cash. I don’t know if you call it a street allowance or a risk allowance.”
About 20km away, at Durban Deep in Roodepoort, another artisanal mining hotspot, residents have long lived in fear of violence and lawlessness. “What we’re seeing from the police now is reactive and it’s all for show,” said one resident who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“And it’s as if only foreigners commit crime in South Africa.” The resident notes that many of the artisanal miners are just trying to eke out a living. “They are not all rapists and thieves. They’re people with families, who live in desperate poverty. Many are forced into these gangs to be able to mine underground.”
Malaka agrees. “The zamas that are working for gold here are not bothering anybody. You can walk here, they won’t even see a woman or a man, they don’t care about you — they are the ones who want to work and I have no problem with them.”
Durban Deep’s residents also lock themselves in their homes at sunset. The resident said: “People are frightened and the reason is because they can’t rely on the police. They’re frightened their names will be given out if they speak to the police.”
The resident claims the police are complicit. “We see them taking money openly. The fact is that the police are making money out of this. It’s not one police station, it’s several that come here to get their money.
“It’s a daily cash cow for them and everybody knows about it. I’ve personally seen it not once, but 100 times. And the one time I did report it, I got harassed mercilessly ... Say they’re going to organise a raid on the zamas, all the cops do is phone their contacts and those guys scatter and they’re gone. The cops who are doing it, their lifestyles are going to be affected if there are no zamas zamas … so, why would they root it out?” the resident asked.
“If you are the station commander or provincial commissioner and you’ve got horrific crime stats of murder and rapes concentrated in one area … if you’ve got your vehicles going to the same area every day, without making an arrest, don’t you check up and see where your staff is going? We’re talking about a huge failure at the local level.”
Acold wind blows through Gloria Masebe’s* neat yard in West Village as she watches the overgrown veld where criminal gangs allegedly lurk. “They break in houses, they rape, they kill. We live in fear here. The police don’t care. They come and collect money from the