Brave Truth by Geraldine Coy

Author:Geraldine Coy [Coy, Geraldine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography - Memoirs, Apartheid
ISBN: 9781742983820
Publisher: Global Publishing Group
Published: 2013-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

THE PERSONALITIES

Director Mpembe, the newly appointed Commissioner of Police for the Crossroads and Philippi areas, was also to give witness to the commission. He presented as a tall, strong, quietly spoken individual who was thoughtful in his responses and who, having only recently been appointed to this role, had clearly taken time to try and understand the circumstances surrounding the anarchy he had inherited. He had an open face and his management of both the commission hearings (and our numerous calls to him for support, guidance and escort through the townships) and his team of scared policemen, was to build an enormous amount of respect among us as we progressed. At the time, this man would have to have been a hero to have undertaken the Herculean task of leading his team back to strong policing in a community where they were naturally hated, often with due cause. Either he was courageous or bloody stupid.

We were to learn from our dealings with him, that he was in no way stupid but rather, that he was driven by a strong sense of natural justice and the will to make things right. It was Director Mpembe who would peel back the layers of the criminal justice system for us so that we could understand exactly why the work we were doing was so important, why there was no way the system was going to be able to cope with the truth at all and that our findings of corruption extended all the way from the criminal gutters to the highest arms of local justice.

From the beginning of the year it had become well reported that the police investigation and preparation of criminal cases were both incompetent and negligent. The question was, was this a case of negligent omission or was there something much more pervasive like corruption going on?

A good example of this was the case of Victor Sam, a Crossroads warlord and a taxi strongman – leader of the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (CATA). He’d been arrested for shooting three men in their knees in Gugulethu– in an Irish Republican Army-like attack. He’d been arrested and charged several times before for murder and kidnapping but had so far avoided being convicted. In 1995 he’d been acquitted on 21 charges including murder and attempted murder. A month later, charges for the kidnapping of two men and their consequent murder were also withdrawn and this was 3 days after he had been granted R4,000 bail on another murder charge. Unbelievable as it seems, he appeared to be untouchable. He clearly had the funds to hire his legal representation and meet his bail payments. Then there was the police admission that witnesses could not be induced to testify, even with an offer of reward, as they feared for their lives.

When he walked into office on the 14th of April 1998, Director Mpembe was inheriting a very complex problem. At the time, his predecessor, Acting Director Perry had handed the responsibility of the WPG

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