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Daily Maverick: Tactical Response Team’s brutal reign in Wesselton, Mpumalanga

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http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-12-10-tactical-response-teams-brutal-reign-in-wesselton-mpumalanga

Tactical Response Team’s brutal reign in Wesselton, Mpumalanga

by Mandy de Waal

Community violence and police brutality have returned to the Mpumalanga township of Wesselton, just outside Ermelo, where it is alleged that the feared Tactical Response Team has become a law unto itself. Residents claim that beatings and humiliating rituals are the order of the day for the people of Wesselton, adding that the local SAPS office refuses to hear their cries for help. As the situation escalates, they are striking matches. By MANDY DE WAAL.

Residents of Wesselton in Mpumalanga went on the warpath recently, torching two cars to protest alleged police violence and the occupation of the area by the Tactical Response Team (TRT).

“On Wednesday 05 December the people took to the street and torched two cars because they were angry with the Tactical Response Team. A few hundred, mostly young people, were protesting and poured petrol on both cars and set them alight,” Msukaligwa Concerned Committee (MMC) deputy chairperson, Dumisani Mahaye, reported to Daily Maverick.

Mahaye said a woman was shot with a rubber bullet on the cheek. “The TRT wanted to arrest her grandson, and the woman wanted to know why, when she was shot in the face,” Mahaye said. He added that the Tactical Response Team had been a fixture in the township for well over a month now.

According to Mahaye the police division, known in the townships as the “amaberet”, were deployed on and off in the Mpumalanga township during 2012, but moved in permanently during November; local residents heard they will be present in the area until mid-January 2013.

“We don’t know why they are here, but our concern is how they behave in the community. Usually people hang out in the parks and every time when the TRT get people, they search them, they beat them, they pour liquor on them. These police sometimes they want all of the people to lie face down on the floor – like to sleep on the floor – and the police walk all over those people,” Mahaye said, before describing his experience with the Tactical Response Team first hand.

“I was beaten by these police while I was in a club. The first time was on a Friday, when they came in and told the DJ to switch the music off. Then a man wearing a brown overall in the TRT screamed: ‘Face the wall. Face your future’. That is when the beatings started. If people weren’t quick enough, or they didn’t face the wall, they were in trouble. If the wall is full, people have to fall down and lie on the ground face-down,” the township activist told Daily Maverick about an attack which took place at a local night club called Dube Tonight in September 2012.

“When they first got here I tried to talk to the TRT. I said: ‘Look, I don’t mind you searching me but…’,” Mahaye’s voice trailed off. He relayed how the TRT started to beat him even before he could get the words out of his mouth. “On Sunday they were back, but I knew how they work now. Some guy screamed and told the DJ to switch the volume off, and then the usual routine followed,” he said.

“The TRT will slap you. They will kick you. They will punch you with the fist in the stomach. If they do not walk on the tables they walk on people’s bodies on the floor. And you don’t look at them. You don’t ask questions. You don’t say anything. If you look at them or ask questions they will brutalise you,” Mahaye told Daily Maverick during a telephonic interview from Wesselton.

Mahaye further alleged that anyone who asked these police any questions about what was happening would be beaten up. “If you ask any questions the TRT will beat you up and they will say to you: “You are not in the position of authority here. We are the ones with guns here. Just do as you are told’,” the activist added.

Mahaye said he was an eyewitness to another incident at a small shopping complex called Thembise in the township. “There are ten shops and a butchery and a bottle store, so the people, they hang out and braai their meat. They open the boot of their car, play music and braai. When the TRT got there they told everyone to face the wall or the floor. They made everyone do push-ups. After that the beatings started,” he said.

“Ever since these police arrived there are ongoing complaints. It is happening almost every day now that people are traumatised; they have firearms pointed at them; people are hit, and our residents are getting very, very angry,” said Mahaye, who stressed that he condemned the torching of a security company vehicle and a Transnet vehicle on Wednesday 05 December 2012 when residents went on the rampage.

“The problem is that the people are now getting so angry that they want to fight the TRT. They want to kill these police or to burn them, because we are making reports but nobody is listening to us,” Mahaye said.

The Wesselton activist said affected residents had gone to the SAPS police station in Ermelo to lodge complaints against the Tactical Response Team, only to be told that the local police weren’t able to help. “If someone wants to open a case they are told to go to the Ipid (the Independent Police Investigative Directorate) offices in Nelspruit. The police here say they don’t have the power to help us. Now the community think that this is a way of trying to get the cases squashed,” said Mahaye.

The Wesselton resident said that Nelspruit was located some 212 kilometres away from Ermelo, and that taxi fare to and from the city meant that locals would need R400 for a return trip. Mahaye said that people didn’t have the money to make the journey.

Mpumalanga police spokesperson, Colonel Leonard Hlathi, said violent incidents the TRT were alleged to have been involved in had to be reported to, and investigated by, Ipid before he could comment. “One cannot just give a comment without any investigations being done. We have all the resources in place for people who need to make such a report, and such an incidence will be investigated by Ipid. I can’t make any comments until such time as these incidents are reported to Ipid, so these complaints can be levelled against the police,” Hlathi said.

When Hlathi was advised by Daily Maverick that Wesselton residents were being instructed by local police to travel some 212 kilometres to Nelspruit to report the incidences of violence to Ipid, he was outraged. “Ipid has done marketing, even on radio, to say that you don’t have to go to them physically to report a case or uncalled for conduct. People can just phone them or get the number from Ipid,” the colonel said.

“There is no reason for the local police to hide this information because Ipid is a legitimate body. There is no way the police can hide this information and I think that you can quote me to say that no police person has the right to hide the availability or existence of Ipid, let alone a number, to anyone who wants to lodge a complaint. The police can’t do that. They can’t do that,” Hlathi said.

Wesselton was set ablaze during service delivery protests in February 2011 which set the stage for violent confrontations between residents and the SAPS. Mayahe and some 100 other residents were arrested and charged with public violence after municipal property to the value of R350,000 was damaged.

After the protests, Mahaye and other activists were picked up by the police and allegedly tortured, with the aim of implicating senior provincial politicians who opposed Premier David Mabuza. Mahaye stated that during the brutality he was repeatedly smothered in plastic, had his head dumped in water, and tortured in ways that would make him stop breathing. Later video evidence of the SAPS abusing a local resident would come to light, and back up the activist’s claims of torture.

David Bruce, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, recently asserted that police action in Wesselton created a template for what was to follow at Marikana in August 2012. “In both operations, it is alleged that those who were involved in the protests were arrested, with a large number of them being tortured. After the Wesselton operation, this led to 25 charges of assault being lodged with the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). In Marikana, this led to 94 cases of assault being lodged with the ICD’s successor, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate,” wrote Bruce in Business Day.

“In both cases, it is alleged that individuals among the police torturers focused on a specific objective. In Wesselton, it was to get confessions that political opponents of Mabuza had instigated the protests. In Marikana, the alleged objective of these torturers was to obtain ‘confessions’ that former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema had instigated the protests,” he added.

Bruce penned that a SAPS force which had turned into “political instruments whose task is to uphold the interests of the ruling elite” within the ANC were deployed in both Ermelo and Marikana. “The ANC’s efforts towards politically re-orientating the SAPS have not been comprehensive but have been targeted at specific components, most notably the Crime Intelligence and Operational Response Services divisions.”

Bruce added that the SAPS could no longer be trusted to play a nonpartisan role in politics and stated that “a culture of political deception, manipulation and intimidation that extends to the use of assassination as a political instrument” would be in force in SA. Bruce’s picture of the future is one where the police stand back when members of the ruling party are violent, but actively target dissidents.

Back in Wesselton, Mahaye heard that the police wanted to pick him up in connection with the latest protests. “The police hit people in the street to try to try get confessions about the protest. They want someone to confess and to point out another person, and then they go and find that person and beat them up too so as to get more confessions,” Mahaye said during the phone interview.

Twenty Wesselton residents were arrested after these latest riots, amongst them four youths between the ages of 14 and 16.

“Someone phoned me to say that I am on the list of the people that must be arrested, and that the police say that I am the instigator for the riots last week. But no. I am not. This time I am not involved, but still they think I am the one,” Mahaye said.

The activist no longer sleeps at his home and lives in fear because of the trauma of his alleged torture experience. He says he fears that if he is apprehended by the police again, he will be brutalised.

For many in troubled townships, a nonpartisan police force that terrorises communities and targets activists and opposition politicians is no portent of the future: it is the awful present tense they’re forced to live with.

Dear Mandela is showing at the The Bioscope in Johannesburg 14th – 19th December

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Zama Ndlovu and Anton Zamisa will be present for a Q&A session

JOHANNESBURG: The Bioscope. 14th – 19th DECEMBER
ONE WEEK EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT!
Dear Mandela will be screening all week, with Q&A after screenings with the filmmakers and special guests.
Screening times: Friday Dec 14 8pm; Saturday Dec 15 3 & 5pm; Sat Dec 16 3pm ; Tues Dec 18 19h30 ; Thurs Dec 20 19h30.
Buy tickets online directly from The Bioscope: http://www.thebioscope.co.za Ticket price R40

“STIRRING…evocatively shot, lucidly edited” – Variety
“BEAUTIFUL and INSIGHTFUL” – Africa Is A Country
“GRIPPING” – Charl Blignaut, City Press
“ENTHRALLING” – Mahala Magazine

WINNER, GRAND JURY PRIZE, BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER, BEST DOCUMENTARY, MONTREAL INT’L BLACK FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER, BEST DOCUMENTARY, BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER, BEST SOUTH AFRICAN DOCUMENTARY, DURBAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
AFRICAN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY
WINNER, GOLDEN BUTTERFLY AWARD, MOVIES THAT MATTER FILM FESTIVAL

Lifting the Lid on Africa’s Toilet Crisis

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http://thinkafricapress.com/health/lifting-lid-africas-toilet-crisis

7 December 2012

Lifting the Lid on Africa’s Toilet Crisis

by Luke Lythgoe

The 12th annual World Toilet Summit has recently concluded in Durban, the first time the event has been held in Africa. It follows in the wake of World Toilet Day, established on November 19, 2001, to raise awareness about numbers of people living without access to proper sanitation – a figure which stands at 2.6 billion worldwide.

The day and the summit are the initiatives of the World Toilet Organisation (WTO), a global non-profit organisation founded in Singapore, which recently derided the UN for failing to adopt World Toilet Day, suggesting they may be “scared of using the word ‘toilet’”. Consequently, the WTO set out to break down toilet taboos and ensure that the provision of improved sanitation facilities (UN nomenclature for ‘toilet’) is no longer overshadowed by its seemingly more wholesome companion cause of providing clean water.

Failure to honour the noble toilet with its own national day aside, accusing the UN of being unconcerned by matters of public sanitation seems unfair. Target 7C of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) was to “Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”. UN-Water, a coordinating mechanism overseeing all relevant organisations, was endorsed in 2003 to pursue this target. And while sanitation may not be celebrated in the annual manner of World Water Day, the UN saw fit to dedicate an entire International Year of Sanitation in 2008.

Progress so far: a drop in the ocean?

With two organisations championing of the issue, there has been a great deal of discussion on the international stage over sanitation in the last decade. But has this just been hot air or has it led to something more solid? In particular, how has the sanitation situation in Africa developed during this decade of activism? With over 600 million people lacking improved sanitation facilities on the continent, Africa has understandably become a major battleground in the fight to bring toilets to the masses.

Initially promising statistics released in a 2012 report by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), in conjunction with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF, quickly become disheartening on closer reading. On the one hand, 189 million more people across Africa gained access to improved sanitation facilities between 1990 and 2010, and the proportion of people with access to improved sanitation facilities has risen from 35% to 40%. On the other hand, however, largely due to the fact there are now 400 million more people in Africa than in 1990, there are 197 million more people without these essential amenities than two decades ago. In proportional terms there has been progress, but in real terms Africa’s exploding population means there are more living without improved sanitation facilities than before.

On a country-specific scale, the situation after over a decade of activism is even more demoralising. Only four sub-Saharan African countries (Angola, Botswana, Rwanda and South Africa) are on track to meet the 2015 targets, while North Africa is the only region that has managed to surpass the targets set at the beginning of the century.

The cost in human lives from continued poor sanitation is staggering, and statistics flagged up by UN-Water make for grim reading. Diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death globally, with 88% of these cases originally caused by poor sanitation or inadequate and unsafe water supplies. 12% of the combined health budget across sub-Saharan Africa is consumed by treating diarrhoea. And globally, 1.5 million children die annually from diseases caused by poor sanitation.

Kicking up a stink about sanitation

While tangible results against poor sanitation have been overwhelmed by sheer demographics, organisations have had more success in raising the profile of the cause.

As the pre-eminent Africa-specific organisation concerned with the plight of sanitation, the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) has had considerable success in getting the issue noticed by African governments such as through the African Sanitation and Hygiene Conferences (AfricaSan), and the subsequent development of the AfricaSan brand to promote sanitation in Africa.

The first conference, held in Johannesburg in 2002, saw sanitation adopted as a specific target of the MDGs. AfricaSan 2 in 2008 tied participant governments to important commitments to better sanitation, as part of the eThekwini Declaration. And AfricaSan 3, held last July in Rwanda, was the most spectacular conference yet, with 900 attendees from 67 different nations (42 from Africa). The choice of Kigali as a venue was also designed to emphasise the campaign’s continuing success, with Rwanda providing a shining example of how high levels of government involvement can produce positive results (54% of Rwanda’s population now have access to improved sanitation facilities).

AMCOW has devised other media-friendly initiatives alongside the conferences such as the AfricaSan awards, whose past winners include a Mozambican musician who writes about using latrines and washing hands. The World Toilet Organisation has also been active in raising public awareness of the issue, with its aforementioned annual summits and eye-catching events such as ‘Big Squats’ – a form of demonstration also utilised by the charity WaterAid.

But some see the various summits as little more than ineffectual talk shops. Sibusiso Zikode, spokesperson for the South African shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), denounced this year’s WTO summit in Durban for being “held without inviting the people who are in need of water and sanitation”, adding “many people want to speak for the poor and about the poor, but very few who will want to speak directly to them”.

Economies going down the toilet

Shunning the gaudier initiatives of award ceremonies or travelling sanitation circuses, other organisations have gone for a hard statistical approach to convincing governments to clean up their acts. This year, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) published a detailed survey of 18 African countries detailing the economic disadvantages to letting sanitation remain in such a poor state. The survey represents 554 million people across many of the countries with the worst sanitation records.

The survey claims the 18 countries are collectively losing $5 billion annually due to poor sanitation, each haemorrhaging between 1% and 2.5% of their GDP due to the costs of sickness and high mortality. Providing country-specific data could hopefully push respective governments into action. Ghana, for example, is shown in the survey to be losing $290 million annually – equivalent to 1.6% of its GDP.

The survey also argues that the necessary investment in better sanitation far outweighs the economic losses of the prevailing situation. Most of the 18 countries are currently investing under 0.1% of their GDP in sanitation – only 5 are investing between 0.1% and 0.5%. Solutions proposed by the survey are hardly unachievable – in Ghana, for example, the construction of just 1 million toilets would dramatically reduce the problem.

The international campaigns of the last decade to improve sanitation in Africa have rapidly raised the profile of this often overlooked issue. Global summits, international days and damning reports all contribute to this long overdue furore. But the key is getting African governments to truly commit to investment in sanitation. International conferences, publicity and economic arguments all go some way to achieving this goal. But with mortality rates due to poor sanitation still soaring in Africa – far higher than conflict, or even HIV/AIDS – perhaps it is time we overcame the taboos and were more vocal in championing the cause of the humble toilet.

SABC: World Toilet Summit starts today

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http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/079f61804daef1bf9983df0380ff593a/World-Toilet-Summit-starts-today-20120412

World Toilet Summit starts today

4 December 2012

The 12th annual World Toilet Summit gets underway in Durban today. However, ordinary men and women on the streets say they do not know what the summit will be about. The three day conference is expected to attract over a thousand delegates and exhibitors and is expected to focus on human rights, health and hygiene.

The main summit theme is African sanitation: Scaling up dignity for all. Spokesperson for the South African shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, Sibusiso Zikode says the summit will be another talk shop as the people who do not have access to water and sanitation are not part of the conference. Zikode says communities without proper toilets were never invited to participate in the conference.

He says, “The summit is one of those talk shops because it does not include the people who are actually in need of toilets. In fact it is unacceptable for such conferences to be held without inviting the people who are in need of water and sanitation. The very same trend continues that so many people want to speak for the poor and about the poor, but very few who will want to speak directly to them. It is true that in South Africa like in many informal settlements there is hardly any water and sanitation.”

Meanwhile, other residents outside Durban say they are still using pit toilets and had no idea what the toilets summit will be discussing in Durban. They say they want government to provide them flushing toilets which will result in their community being clean. The current ground toilets are said to be unsafe for children.

President Jacob Zuma has urged government to speed up the process to provide them with proper toilets.