The mother of a dead child has given Viewfinder access to the tapes of a disciplinary hearing of the police officer accused of killing her son. The tapes reveal the inner workings of police hearings, from which brutality-accused officers routinely emerge unpunished, and from which even the police watchdog is excluded.
A stretch of the N2 highway, alongside the border of eSwatini, near where an Ermelo police Warrant Officer abducted and raped a 17-year-old school girl in June 2014. (Photo by Annelia Smit)
Policemen have been accused of nearly 1 000 rapes since 2012. Many of these suspects stand accused of abusing the authority of their positions to aid them in these crimes, a new investigation by Viewfinder has found. Yet, police management rarely disciplines or dismisses the officers involved.
On the afternoon of 6 June 2014, 36-year-old Ermelo police Warrant Officer Sipho was sitting alone in a white bakkie on a quiet stretch of the N2 highway in south-eastern Mpumalanga. Through his windshield, Sipho spotted 17-year-old schoolgirl Lerato
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On 2 June 2014, 52-year-old Phindile Ramncwana lay dying at a neighbour’s house in Sada, a rural township in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape. As Esther Kasam tended to him, she recoiled at the sight of blood and vomit in a five-litre container on the floor beside his bed. Ramncwana retched when he tried to eat. He complained of stabbing pains in his stomach, Kasam recalled during a recent interview.
“Phindile, what did you say when they were hitting you?” Kasam had asked.
“I was crying a lot. I asked what I had done to be beaten like this. I begged for forgiveness,” came his response.