Directly as a consequence of police corruption,
(primarily white police corruption, by the way, as until recently there
were no senior black policemen) Cape Town has the unenviable reputation
of being the world's drugs-in-transit capital, Durban has a world-wide
reputation for having the easiest customs clearance of any developed harbour
anywhere, and Johannesburg and its environs has surfaced repeatedly as
the murder capital of the world.
Let me make this clear:
Police corruption has not only led to this
state of affairs, through ineffective prosecution of duties. It's
not a matter of the police simply not catching the crooks, though that
happens often enough.
The police, far more often than not, actually
are the crooks. They have been for a very long time.
The biggest difference between the South
African Police and the South African Defence Force was that the latter
was conscripted, and therefore often unwilling, while the former was voluntary
and very, very willing.
Consequently, the South African Defence
Force often had to act against its own personnel.
Over
the last 2 years the stories that made the rounds when I was in the army
have finally begun to come to light - stories of how the army castrated
(physically, not chemically) soldiers who were in doubt about their sexual
orientation. Stories of how dissenters were beaten, (I was one of
them - beaten till my torso was covered in blood, a beating that was tacitly
approved by the ranking hierarchy) sometimes killed, and covered up.
Stories, finally being documented, of how permanent force soldiers, black
and white, and white conscripts, who were considered a security risk,
were beaten to death with rubber mallets - the rubber mallet being the
best tool for the job, for reasons that escape me.
How many mothers wonder now whether the
government that they voted in beat their son to death with a rubber mallet
?
We were seconded to the Police Force, in
KwaZulu Natal, at the height of the undeclared revolution. We smoked
a hell of a lot of dope, and talked to a hell of a lot of black people.
They thought we had come to save them from the police. Funny that.
I have two vivid memories of that time:
The first late one night, as we rode on
patrol. We passed a house where the door was broken in, and an old
woman came running out, crying, to ask us why the police had done it.
They had come through there and kicked it in, firing into the roof, for
fun, because they were drunk, and wanted to see her run around. She
didn't understand that it just their idea of fun, and was worried she was
going to be killed the next day. I remember her outrage and her anger
and her fear, but most of all her confusion.
The man next door looked over at us, and
said, before turning away "You come here in the day, and it's alright,
but then at night the police come. What's the use?". Then he
went inside. Her crying, and his slow burning anger, and me in the
middle of it. Kensho.
The other took place early one morning.
We'd been in the area for a few hours by the time the sun came up, and
we had relaxed into the early morning. We were lucky in that many
of troops were originally from Natal, and were fluent in Zulu. Thus
we were accepted a little more. We were also lucky in that the SADF
had a reputation in the black community for fairness, derived entirely
from the fact that the Police were leery of committing outright crimes
around us, with us being conscripts, and therefore not entirely trustworthy.
We had climbed off the Troop carrier and
were variously standing and sitting in the street, when the door to one
of the little houses (4 walls and a roof, and spotless - neat as pin) opened
behind me. I turned around, and a very pretty, neat young woman came
out. She must have been about thirty years old.
This was about 05h00, and she was dressed
and ready for the long haul, by bus to taxi or both, to work in Pinetown
or Durban, many kilometres away, and I imagine time was of the essence.
But she'd taken the time to make each and every one of us coffee.
And put the cups in saucers, and there was fucking doily on each saucer.
So we had coffee there that morning, and I never looked back. Kensho.
I
went on leave - 14 days - shortly thereafter, and when I returned I got
blindingly drunk, and handed in all my kit. I remember explaining
clearly that I had no intention of doing this any more, and that I had
no solution to the difficulties I was raising, but that I was going no
further with it. I was 17 years old.
I woke up committed as insane, in Addington
Mental Hospital, where I was sprung after three weeks, by a doctor who
was equally incensed and who had refused to bear arms during his national
service (for which decision the army had rewarded him by making him – initially
- a combat medic, to be dropped in hot-zones only - their idea of irony),
and returned shattered to my unit.
3 months later we were all discharged.
I had three outstanding charges all for 'weerbarstigheid' (non-conformity)
pending at the time, but I think I bought them off by trading the law clerk
a baggie of dope for their disappearance.
I have been in their face ever since without
fucking fail. I don't drive past a police incident without stopping,
counselling, taking names and badge numbers. I have been shot at,
and threatened, and I have had guns stuck in my mouth. And that's
still not enough. There is always more that you can do. They're
always wrong, and they always back down. Without fucking fail, and
I will be in their face until I die.
I don't have a television at home, because
the last thing that I saw on a TV I owned, was in 1990. It was a
news report of an incident that took place in the north of this country
in a town called Louis Trichardt.
On a bright and shining Sunday morning,
in the town of Louis Trichardt, a black Sunday school outing had stopped
to refuel.
Black Christian movements in South Africa
are the home of the poorest of the poor, the rural poor. Their rectitude
is unimpeachable. They
are strictly law-abiding, even at times
when the law is unforgivably cruel.
This day, the leaders of the party decided
to buy ice cream for the children they were chaperoning. And having
done so, they chose to eat it in a park on this small town. They
probably felt safe doing so. Change was coming. Nelson Mandela
was a public figure again. So they decamped and sat and ate their
ice cream.
During the time they did so, the citizens
of that good town had noticed, on leaving their own churches, that the
park was occupied. It was, of course, a 'whites-only' park.
And so, being good citizens, they rounded
up a posse, and in convoy of Datsuns and LDV's descended on that park,
and beat the children and their chaperones savagely. They used whips
and pick-axe handles, and lengths of chain.
Pick-axe handles on the heads and arms
and backs of screaming little three and four year-old children. In
a park. In the sun. On a Sunday. Eating what was probably
for many a rare treat. An ice cream.
And the police stood by in approbation.
Like so many other times, no one was ever
arrested, and to date no one punished.
I don't mind knowing, in fact, quite the
converse - I'm dedicated to knowing, but there's only so much horror one
can see. I don't own a TV because I can't look any more.
Official spokesmen have been saying for
the last 4 years that all is well, and the racist barbarity that is so
deep-ingrained a feature of Afrikaner culture has been largely eradicated
in state services. This despite the repeated occurrence of events such
as this one, both in the police forces and the Defence Force. There
has never been national expiation and no real sorrow at what was done.
I understand why they would want to say that there is no longer a problem
of pervasive racism, but I don't think so.
We negotiated a revolution at tremendous
expense. One of the costs associated was the retention of people
whom any other country would simply have painlessly put to death.
I don't know why I'm writing this, except
that I want to apologise to every black person I know:
I was in the army with them. We should
have killed them when we had the chance.
---
Note: the Mail and Guardian has been covering
the trial of Wouter Basson. They are the only credible investigative
newspaper in this country, on this matter or largely on any other, though
their recent editorial changes may well be telling. Visit them on-line
at http://www.mg.co.za
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