‘We’re going to burn you’
THE MAN cowered, trying to protect his head, as the blows pounded his body.
The suspected thief, known only as Johannes, begged the growing crowd of angry residents of Snake Park, Soweto, to stop assaulting him on Tuesday.
But he and his alleged accomplice got no mercy from this impoverished community.
Its residents are “sick and tired” of being victims of crime.
His whip bloodied, Sipho Ngwekazi licked his lips.
“Today we’re going to kill these Mozambican thieves,” he said.
As if to make his point, the unemployed 23-year-old man pointed to a towering mine dump that looms over Block 1 in Snake Park.
“That’s where we’ll dump their bodies,” he vowed. “You’ll see what mob justice is all about.”
He and the rest of the mob were following as the two – the other called Petrus – were dragged to a house in Block 9, where they were believed to be hiding stolen TVs.
With their faces and clothes bloodied, the men were dragged, kicked and pushed for several kilometres in the heat.
“If you don’t give us the TVs, we’re going to burn you. That’s how we’ll kill you,” some residents warned.
“We have to take the law into our own hands. The police don’t care. They will just release them,” said Lindiwe Jonas, a resident of Block 2.
“Yes, we have to teach them a lesson… we will burn rope in the hands they used to steal from us,” her friend Esther Letswalo said. “This is why we don’t want foreigners here in our community.”
A patrolling Dobsonville police van tried to follow the crowd through Snake Park’s dusty alleys. Police back-up was called. As the crowd bayed for his blood, Johannes, his shirt bloodied and one eye swollen shut, seemed to plead with the police to intervene as the crowd tried to get to him.
Protectively, the police encircled him.
“We are taking them with us,” an armed policewoman informed the crowd. “We can’t allow mob justice.”
The police put the two men in their van and drove off.
The community roared, incensed.
“The law is useless,” spat one resident, who didn’t want to be named. “The police will just release them. They get away with it.”
Later, a small group of residents threatened to burn the shacks of the men they suspected of being thieves.
Instead, they darted inside one of the men’s homes, where they were seen stealing jewellery. Then they vanished.