BRENDAN ROANE AND SHAUN [email protected]@inl.co.za
IN THE HOURS before hisdeath, Constable GoodmanLubisi appeared to be in a
pensive mood.The chatty cop with the
gold tooth was well liked inSandton, said a friend. Butlast Wednesday afternoon,Lubisi, or Gift as he wasknown to his friends, wasn’this usual talkative self.
He was in his police uni-form, and his silence worriedhis friend.
“I asked him if he wastired, and he replied ‘No, I’mnot tired, I’m just thinking,’ “said the friend, who did notwant to be named because offears that he will be harassedfor speaking to the media.
What the friend didn’tknow was that Lubisi hadbeen celebrating his 31st birth-day.
And, just more than 12hours later, the policemanwould be dead.
The cop died when the Audi
R8 supercar he was driving in,crashed into a tree.
Why the constable was inthe car remains a mystery, asdoes why – so many hoursafter his friend had seen him –he was still in police uniform
and presumably on duty. Lubisi was also remem-
bered by his colleagues at aservice on Tuesday.
“He would always say ‘youguys are my friends, but if youbreak the law, I’ll put you in
my African bangles’,” he said,adding that bangles was slangfor handcuffs.
“This was a joyride… andthis other cop is trying to (saveface),” the friend said.
He was referring to the offi-
cial police version of eventsalleging that police officershad found dagga in the Audiduring a search and that thedriver, Areff Haffejee, hadsped off while Lubisi was stillconducting the search.
Police also said this had ledto a high-speed chase for about7km along Oxford and Rivoniaroads.
Perhaps, said the friend,the joyride had been a birth-day gift that went horriblywrong.
On Tuesday, at a service,police officers from the Sand-ton police station honouredtheir fallen comrade.
According to his obituary,Lubisi was born in Bushbuck-ridge in 1982. After matriculat-ing in 2000, he studied atUnisa.
He joined the SAPS in 2008. “Goodman was the Sand-
ton celeb. He knew everybody,from the good guys to the badguys, but he wasn’t a bad guy,”said the friend.
The friend dismissedclaims that he might haveplanted dagga.
He said he believed Lubisiwould never frame someonefor money.
The friend also said theconstable was not with hisusual partner and that theofficer in the police van thatwas following the Audi mustexplain what happened.
Meanwhile, a source at theprovincial investigative unitfor Gauteng slammed reportsthat the police docket for thecrash had gone missing, andsaid it had been handed overto the Independent PoliceInvestigative Directorate.
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A LION that escaped from aprivate game reserve has beenterrorising residents ofMakhado (Louis Trichardt) inLimpopo for a week, police saidyesterday.
Police have been hunting forthe animal, but so far havebeen chasing theirtails.
“We have beeninformed that amale lion escapedfrom Safari Lodgeoutside Makhado last week,”police spokesman Nechin-damatsi Marubeni said.
“It was last sighted yester-day (Wednesday) and oursearch party has so far notmanaged to capture it.”
Marubini described the lionas a “grown male with a bighead”.
He said: “Obviously thetownspeople are scared,because they do not know whenit might pounce.”
He appealed to members ofthe public to imme-diately report anysighting of thisking of the jungle.
Limpopo ishome to several
private game reserves, but dan-gerous animals rarely breakout.
A large part of KrugerNational Park, the country’sbiggest game park, also strad-dles the province. – Sapa-AFP
Escaped lion terrorisingMakhado residents
Understaffed school inrow with department
Free State ANC membersto hold elections again
CHESTER MAKANA
A WAR of words is brewingbetween Noko SecondarySchool and the Limpopo Edu-cation Department becausethe school has been operat-ing without teachers forthree major subjects.
Parents and school teach-ers, including the principalLesiba Gwangwa, werelocked in a protracted meet-ing yesterday in the school atPinky Sebotse village, out-side Polokwane.
Parents want the princi-pal to stand down, saying hehas failed the pupils.
The school is operatingwith seven teachers for 76pupils and does not have anagriculture and businessstudies teacher. The geogra-phy teacher had complainedto parents of his workload.
The school has seen adecline in its matric passrate from 77 percent in 2010to 28 percent last year.
The decline in the passrate has discouraged pupils,causing them to leave andjoin the better-performingneighbouring school. Thelow enrolment has promptedthe department to considerclosing the school.
FREE State ANC members willget another chance to elect anew leadership next month,a provincial ANC official con-firmed yesterday.
Free State ANC spokesmanOupa Khoabane said theprovincial task team to overseethe elections met during theweek and decided the provin-cial elective conference wouldbe held on February 23.
The one-day conference forthe election of the new provin-cial executive committee (PEC)will be held in Parys.
ANC secretary-generalGwede Mantashe announcedthe task team during a pressbriefing after a national execu-
tive committee (NEC) meetingin Bloemfontein before thestart of the Mangaung nationalelective conference last month.
There are 11 women andnine men on the team, whichincludes Free State ANC chair-man Ace Magashule, who rep-resents the party’s NEC.
It followed a successfulcourt challenge by a group ofsix disgruntled Free State ANCmembers in the ConstitutionalCourt on the legality of theprovincial elective conferenceheld in Parys in June lastyear.
The court held that the FreeState PEC elected last year wasunlawful. – Sapa
ANGELIQUE [email protected]
LAST week, two Sandton policeofficers pulled over a motorist,claimed she had drugs in her carand forced her to drive to an ATMto extort money from her.
Just four days later, policeofficers from the same station
were involved in a mysteriousaccident in an Audi R8 that sawthe businessman driver and apolice officer killed.
Police claimed they had founddagga in the car when they
pulled it over. Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo
Dlamini said the two constablesimplicated in the ATM incident,Linda Mlambo and MahlangShaku, appeared in the Randburg
Magistrate’s Court on charges ofcorruption yesterday.
Dlamini said it was alleged thaton January 6, the two policemenpulled over a woman, and –similarly to the incident involving
the Audi R8 – she was accused ofhaving drugs in the car.
The officers then took awayher driving licence and forced herto drive to an ATM in SunninghillVillage.
A source told The Star thewoman was pregnant and CCTVfootage caught the officers forcingthe woman to draw the money.She withdrew R1 000.
The men were arrested thisweek and Dlamini said they werereleased on R3 000 bail each andwould appear in court again onFebruary 20 .
Officers in court over bribe claims
CAROLYN RAPHAELY
THE ASSAULT and torture ofprisoners is part of a pervasivepattern in what appears to bea nationwide epidemic ofwarder-on-inmate violence.
It is occurring in prisonsfrom Mafikeng to Mangaung,from Diepkloof to Durban,from Port Elizabeth to Polls-moor and from Grootvlei toGroenpunt.
Rooigrond prison inmateJohn Banda, for example, wasshot by a warder with a rubberbullet inside a Mangaungprison cell in 2009 after return-ing from the exercise yard tofind other inmates had set hiscell alight.
“The securities (sic) wereshooting in the street (corri-dor). They locked eight of us ina cell. I tried to tell the warder*I wasn’t involved with theburning, but he wouldn’t listenand threw teargas under thedoor.
“He put the nose of his gunthrough the peephole and shotme under my navel. Anotherwarder* pushed me against thedoor frame and shocked metwice with a shield.
“While I was lying on thefloor, a secu-rity* beat me inthe face withthe back of hisgun, assaultedand kicked me.Then they tookus where the CCTV camerascan’t see you, tied our handsbehind our backs, sprayed uswith fire extinguishers andkicked us.”
Banda was taken to theprison hospital and operatedon before being locked in isola-tion cells for three days, with-out being charged with anyoffence. He has the medicalrecords to prove that a bulletleft “a 12cm-long tunnel” in hisabdomen.
In a country where tortureis currently not a crime, storieslike Banda’s are not unique.
This culture of violence andimpunity among prison offi-cials is exacerbated by the factthat the Correctional ServicesAct permits the use of restraintmechanisms such as electroni-cally activated stun belts, elec-tric shock shields, leg irons,belly chains and batons.
In addition, the Correc-tional Matters Amendment Billdoes not deal with a key aspectof detainees’ experience – theuse of force by correctionalofficials or their training in theuse of restraint equipment.
The legislation permits theuse of internationally con-demned equipment that canbe employed deliberately to
violate inmates’ rights.The infamous tonfas, don-
key piel or baton, widelyaccepted as having a legitimatelaw enforcement function, caneasily be abused in the absenceof regulations governing itsuse. For example, when a bluntforce soft-tissue head injury isrecorded as the cause of death,it’s often consistent with batonabuse.
“Warders regularly com-plain that they don’t feel confi-dent using batons becausethey’re not trained to distin-guish between minimum andmaximum force,” noted JustDetention International’sSasha Gear.
Airport heist accused Uaka-rajee Maundu, 40, released onbail in May last year fromMedium A’s awaiting-trial sec-tion of Johannesburg Prison,said: “Every day I saw wardersbeating up inmates for noapparent reason.”
According to Sbu Mntambo,a former inmate of KwaZulu-Natal’s Eshowe CorrectionalCentre, the most commontorture method was beatinginmates under their feet withthe tonfas.
“Even so, the strip searcheswere the veryworst thingthat happenedto me inside.The wardersmade us stripnaked and lie
on the wet concrete floor in along chain.
“You were forced to havesomeone’s head in your arseand your head in someoneelse’s arse. If you raised yourhead, they’d hit you with atonfas.”
Similar search methodsemployed during prisonwidemass assaults by warders usingshock shields at Port Eliza-beth’s St Albans Prisonresulted in former inmateBradley McCallum success-fully prosecuting South Africaat the UN Human Rights Com-mittee in Geneva.
“At Mangaung,” Bandarecalls, “warders often calledthe special ‘securities’ whocame with dogs, shock shieldsand guns. They made you takeoff your clothes and wet you –the shock is much more power-ful when you’re wet… Theywore balaclavas so you couldn’tsee their faces.”
The Wits Justice Project(WJP) has received similarreports from prisons aroundthe country.● Raphaely is a member of theWJP, which investigates mis-carriages of justice.
* Warders’ names areknown to the WJP.
‘Assault, torture of inmates rife inprisons nationwide’
‘Another wardershocked me twicewith a shield’
Cop in supercar crash ‘a Sandton celebrity’Colleaguedefends officeron allegations ofplanting dagga
THE REMAINS: Police officers examine the wreckage of an Audi R8 that crashed into a tree last week, killing thedriver and a policeman in Saxonwold, Joburg. PICTURE: DUMISANI DUBE
The police havebeen chasingtheir tails so far
