Amnesty International Report 2000 - South Africa

Head of state and government: Thabo Mbeki (replaced Nelson Mandela in June)
Capital: Pretoria
Population: 42.4 million
Official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
Death penalty: abolitionist for all crimes

There were frequent reports of police torture and ill-treatment and unjustified use of lethal force while investigating crime. Asylum-seekers and suspected illegal immigrants were also victims of official ill-treatment or racially motivated attacks. Politically motivated violence continued in parts of the country. Trial proceedings began against the former head of the Chemical and Biological Warfare program in connection with killings of opponents of the former apartheid government.

Background

In June a new government under President Thabo Mbeki was elected into office after largely peaceful elections.

Public anger and international concern over high rates of violent crime, allegations of police corruption and a spate of fatal bombings in Western Cape province placed pressure on the government to protect communities against crime. The increasing number of vigilante assaults and killings underscored public loss of faith in the criminal justice system.

The government established a new national priority crime investigation unit, the "Scorpions", under the authority of the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP). President Mbeki's government introduced legislation to tighten controls over gun ownership, but delayed implementing the 1998 amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act. This would restrict the police use of lethal force unless proportionate to the threat posed to life. The government also requested the Law Commission to review the period allowed for interrogation of suspects without charge.

Human rights violations by the security forces

There were reports of torture, ill-treatment and unjustified use of lethal force by the security forces, including specialized police squads such as the Murder and Robbery, Firearms and Dog Units; the Municipal Police; and the South African National Defence Force stationed in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal provinces. The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), responsible for investigating deaths in custody or as a result of police action and other serious alleged violations, received reports of 363 deaths as a result of police action, 153 deaths in police custody and 28 alleged incidents of torture between April and December 1999.

There were other cases of torture during crime investigation.

• In February, in the Johannesburg area of Townsview, members of a security firm, BBR, beat and kicked 19-year-old Archie Ngubalane, whom they had handcuffed to a railing and accused of an attempted stabbing. They threatened to shoot a relative who tried to intervene. Police failed to arrest the BBR members for assault, but arrested Archie Ngubalane and detained him at Booysens police station, where he was denied proper medical care. He was subsequently charged with attempted murder, denied bail and transferred to Diepkloof Prison, where he was again denied proper medical care, including for epilepsy. He was released on bail in August and acquitted of the charge in September. No progress had been made in the police investigation of his complaint against BBR for assault.
• In August police at Bayview station in Durban arrested and severely assaulted four teenage boys in connection with a robbery. One died within 24 hours of his arrest. The police allegedly hit them with broom handles and kicked and punched them in the station parking lot, before transferring them to Chatsworth police station where they were locked in a freezing, filthy cell. Although the detainees pleaded for medical treatment, the police allegedly refused.

Certain police units were frequently linked to allegations of torture, including the Brixton Murder and Robbery Unit in Johannesburg. In October government lawyers conceded that Unit members had tortured

54-year-old Lucy Themba and 24-year-old Charlotte Pharamela in June 1996. Both women, who were being interrogated about the whereabouts of Lucy Themba's son, had been assaulted during arrest and subjected to electric shocks and suffocation torture while tied by their arms and legs to chairs.

• Shaheed Cajee was arrested in October in connection with possession of stolen goods and was allegedly subjected to electric shocks and smothered with a wet bag while tied naked and blindfolded to a chair at Unit headquarters. He signed a statement under duress and was transferred to Diepkloof prison pending his trial.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) declined to prosecute most of the police officers investigated for involvement in beatings, inflicting cigarette burns, and setting police dogs on arrested criminal suspects. The incidents, which had been filmed by a television journalist, had been publicly broadcast in April. However, the DPP ordered two officers from the Brixton Flying Squad to be prosecuted for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Excessive use of lethal force by police emerged in a number of cases where evidence suggested that criminal suspects had been deliberately killed by police when they posed no threat to life. In May the ICD arrested a Hout Bay police officer after he had allegedly shot dead suspected robber Dumisane Zwane while he was lying injured on the ground. The DPP ordered the officer, who had been released on bail in June, to be prosecuted for murder and defeating the ends of justice. Three other officers from Hout Bay police station were also charged as accessories.

Political killings

Government officials accused the anti-crime vigilante group People Against Gangs and Drugs (PAGAD) of politically motivated terrorism after a series of bomb attacks on Cape Town police stations and the Wynberg regional court, and attacks on police officers investigating crimes linked to PAGAD. Some Muslim critics of PAGAD tactics had their homes bombed or were victims of "drive-by" shootings. During 1999 independent investigations indicated that there may have been police and intelligence agency involvement in certain bombing incidents blamed on PAGAD.

• On 8 January, 22-year-old Yusuf Jacobs was shot by police who were attempting to disperse a demonstration by Muslim organizations against the visit to Cape Town by the British Prime Minister. A number of others were injured, including a journalist. Yusuf Jacobs, who was dragged from the scene by the police, died in hospital four days later. The ICD had not concluded its investigation by the end of 1999. In the wake of Yusuf Jacobs' death PAGAD officials reportedly denounced the government and threatened to kill police officers in revenge.
• On 14 January, Captain Benny Lategan, who was leading an investigation into PAGAD-linked crimes, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting. In the following days police raided homes of PAGAD members and allegedly assaulted them with fists, gun butts and other objects.

Political tensions and violence continued in KwaZulu Natal, including in the volatile Richmond area. The assassination on 23 January of Sifiso Nkabinde, General Secretary of the United Democratic Movement, was followed by other acts of violence and killings in Richmond. Eleven members of one African National Congress (ANC) supporting household in Maswazini, Richmond, were shot dead in their sleep on 23 January. On the same night a military patrol shot and killed Mbongoleni Mtolo, one of Sifiso Nkabinde's bodyguards, in disputed circumstances. He was due to appear in court charged in connection with the July 1998 Richmond "tavern massacre". In November the trial of seven men in connection with Sifiso Nkabinde's murder began in the Pietermaritzburg High Court amid concerns for the safety of witnesses, investigators and lawyers involved. In the same month police arrested suspects in the Maswazini massacre, including four members of an infantry battalion involved in patrolling the Richmond area earlier in the year.

Impunity

The Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) continued hearings on hundreds of remaining amnesty applications. The Committee announced in December that it had granted amnesty to some 560 applicants and refused it to nearly 10 times that number. Among other decisions made public in 1999, the Committee refused amnesty to three former security police officers in connection with the 1977 death in custody of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and to Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis convicted for the 1993 assassination of former ANC military leader Chris Hani. The Committee granted amnesty to, among others, a serving police officer, Jeffrey Benzien, for "politically motivated" acts of torture of apartheid government opponents, and to six former members of a covert military "hit squad" responsible for scores of assassinations in KwaZulu Natal in the early 1990s.

The NDPP established a unit to investigate possible prosecutions of perpetrators of past human rights violations who had failed to receive amnesty or to cooperate with the TRC.

The former head of the apartheid-era Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) program, Dr Wouter Basson, appeared in the Pretoria High Court in October, to face a range of charges including multiple counts of murder and attempted murder of opponents of the apartheid government. However, shortly after the trial began the presiding judge set aside six conspiracy to murder charges relating to planned or actual murders in the 1980s of former government opponents abroad, including the murder of about 200 imprisoned members of the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO). The judge ruled that South African courts did not have the jurisdiction to try these crimes. In October survivors of past human rights violations publicly protested against the government's failure to implement the TRC's recommendations for financial and other reparations to thousands of victims.

Human rights defenders

Human rights activists, lawyers and members of official investigation bodies were subjected to malicious prosecutions, death threats or physical attacks as a result of their work.

• Members of the Violence Investigation Unit (VIU), responsible for investigating politically motivated violence in northern KwaZulu Natal, came under sustained gunfire on 14 April when trying to recover the body of Vasi Ntuli. He had been shot and abducted on 29 March by men linked to a local councillor and "warlord", acting with the complicity of the local police. A member of the VIU was injured and their vehicle damaged.
• In May Brixton Murder and Robbery Unit police arrested two human rights lawyers who had been gathering evidence near the police station in corroboration of alleged torture by Unit members of two security guards in April. The police seized a camera, notepad and mobile phone from them and locked the lawyers in a cell, before charging them under the 1959 Correctional Services Act which prohibits the photographing of prisons and police stations. They were released provisionally. The charges were withdrawn in October.

Refugee concerns

Violations of the rights of refugees and migrants were detailed in a report published in March by the South African Human Rights Commission in collaboration with non-governmental organizations from the National Consortium on Refugee Affairs. The report documented a pattern of arbitrary arrest, extortion, degrading verbal abuse and assault targeted at people of "foreign appearance". It also described a pattern of prolonged, unlawful detentions at the Lindela Repatriation Facility and found that a number of people had been returned to their country of origin in spite of having a prima facie claim for refugee status.

In November the Commission obtained a High Court ruling ordering Lindela to release 41 named detainees who had been held for many months longer than the permitted 30-day period.

• A police officer from Brixton police station verbally abused, assaulted and unlawfully detained Dr Frank Nyame, a Ghanaian research scientist, claiming that he was an "illegal immigrant". On 18 April Dr Nyame was accosted in the street by two white men in plain clothes, one of whom demanded to see his immigration papers and attempted to force him into a nearby police vehicle. When he later complained at Brixton police station, one of the two men, now in police uniform, told him he was under arrest and knocked him unconscious. After he had recovered consciousness he was locked in a cell and, despite repeated requests to see a doctor, was given no medical treatment. He was released after some hours.
• On 10 April an asylum-seeker from Burundi, Charles Manirakiza, was attacked and killed by a number of white men in the Sunnyside area of Pretoria. During the attack neighbours and friends tried to obtain police assistance, but the police allegedly refused to intervene. He died while police were at the scene. A post-mortem indicated that he had been strangled to death. His body also had multiple abrasions and bruising. Three suspects were charged in the Pretoria magistrate's court with murder and were released on bail in May. Some witnesses were forced to move away from the area because of intimidation and threats.

The courts ruled in a number of cases that the police had acted unlawfully. In October an inquest magistrate ruled that the Cape Town police were prima facie responsible for the death in June 1997 of Jean-Pierre Kanyangwa, a Burundian asylum-seeker, by negligently failing to take him to hospital. In the same month a Zimbabwean citizen, Thabani Ndlodlo, was awarded damages after the state conceded that two police officers had unlawfully assaulted him and shot him in the legs, had maliciously prosecuted him on criminal charges and had wrongfully detained him for 446 days. The Randburg regional court had acquitted him on all charges in May 1999 after finding the police had lied to the court.

AI country reports and visits

Reports and public statements

• South Africa: Human Rights Day – preserving human rights gains (AI Index: AFR 53/002/99)
• South Africa: Torture and misuse of lethal force by security forces must end (AI Index: AFR 53/005/99)
• South Africa: Establishing a culture of accountability for human rights violations (AI Index: AFR 53/006/99)
• South Africa: No impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses (AI Index: AFR 53/010/99)
• South Africa: Mengistu – the opportunity for justice must not be lost (AI Index: AFR 53/012/99)
• South Africa: Mengistu – failure to respect international human rights obligations (AI Index: AFR 53/013/99)
• Forensic Medicine and Ethics: A workshop on the application of forensic skills to the detection and documentation of human rights violations, Durban, July 1998 (AI Index: ACT 75/012/99)

Visits

An AI delegate visited South Africa in April and August to conduct research into developments affecting human rights.