The soundtrack of SA, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’

This is SA’s soundtrack: a police service that, increasingly, doesn’t function. A daily, senseless, consuming lawlessness where there are no longer consequences for even the worst crimes.

On a warm summer afternoon near Sannieshof in North West in January 2020, Grain SA chairperson Derek Mathews and his family are hosting a stork party for his daughter and celebrating his grandson’s birthday. It is a small gathering of family and friends. 

Then violence erupts.

Everyone is tied up on the floor. Baby blankets and clothes are flung over faces. Mathews is forced to show criminals the vault, but the key sticks in the lock. The incensed intruders assault him with rifle butts and boil a kettle. They pour boiling water over him. 

His wife gives them an envelope with R1,000. In return, they beat her.

A daughter-in-law is undressed and tied up, forced to sit naked on the floor. Mathews’ daughter gives them her debit card and PIN.

Eventually, they leave with a small wine collection, laptop, medals, phones and wedding rings. Later, five men are arrested in Rustenburg and Alexandra. They were caught on security cameras, used the debit card and had the stolen property in their possession. They confess. More than two years later Mathews happens to hear from the investigation officer that the case was wrapped up quietly. The men were sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for five years. They are free. 

On a Monday afternoon in March in dusty Siyabuswa, Mpumalanga, the world-renowned Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu prepares for an afternoon nap.

The frail 87-year-old locks all the doors and windows, but someone has already entered her house. He grabs her from behind, around the neck. He hits her in the face, ties her up and chokes her until she faints. 

He ransacks her house and flees with cash and her firearm. She has since been too scared to be alone in her house at night. 

No one has been arrested.

On a Sunday afternoon 11 days ago, nine people were sitting in front of a house in Lindela Street in Khayelitsha. Three armed men appeared and sprayed them with bullets. Two young women and four men die in the bloodbath.

The previous week five people were massacred in neighbouring Endlovini, as well as 10 people in separate incidents in Manenberg on the Cape Flats. It is turned into a battlefield of anonymous statistics.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the incident in Lindela Street and the investigation continues. The community is trying to organise a neighbourhood watch.

On a Thursday evening in September last year, someone knocked on the door of Zolisa Panyaza’s farmhouse near Komga in the Eastern Cape. She opened, only to be shot dead. Her 20-year old son, who tried to help her, was shot 10 times. 

Panyaza’s 10-year-old daughter was hiding under a pile of laundry in the bathroom while her mother lay dead in the entrance to their house.

Read the full article and more news, analysis and interviews in this Friday’s edition of Vrye Weekblad. 

Must-read articles in this week’s Vrye Weekblad

>> Browse the full April 1 edition

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MANY WEAPONS, FEW FACTS | Boer leader Piet Retief would have learned a thing or two from negotiations between taxi bosses and taxi associations when nobody wanted to lay down their weapons. 

THE LENS IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD | Is one picture capturing the bloodied heart of conflict worth the life of the photographer? Can images and video be more powerful than guns and tanks? 

STYLE AND SCHOPENHAUER | Style. That’s the attitude. Like Shaka. And Winnie. And General Christiaan de Wet. And Jesus. 

COFFEE IS NOT JUST FOR DRINKING | We experiment with coffee in cooking and share recipes using coffee from Lientjie Wessels’ new book