Source: News24
Title: Youth killed as Alex school pupils riot
Date Published: 31-5-2000
Today`s Date: 1-6-2000
Comments:

Johannesburg - A 20-year-old youth was shot dead and another admitted to a local clinic after being shot during clashes between high school students and police in Alexandra on Tuesday.
About 500 Realogile High School pupils went on the rampage on Tuesday morning because they believed the owner of a 15th Avenue shop in Alexandra had killed a member of their school's students' representative council on Monday, police said.
Johannesburg police spokesperson Inspector Willem de Villiers said it was unclear whether the youth killed on Tuesday was shot dead by the police or the pupils during the attack on the shop.
Police were not sure whether the youth was a pupil at Realogile High because he was not dressed in a school uniform. His name had not been released by late on Tuesday because his next of kin had not been informed.
De Villiers said that when the pupils arrived at the shop, the shop owner called the police and two vehicles responded. The school children then fired shots and threw stones and petrol bombs at the two police vehicles.
He said eight more police vehicles arrived after the first group of policemen were unable to control the unruly pupils.
Police fired warning shots and managed to defuse the volatile situation before withdrawing.
Four police officers were wounded in the attack, including a policewoman who was hit in the face with a brick. The shop owner's house was also burned down.
De Villiers said police managed to arrest a number of the pupils involved.
According to Norma Modipa, the "huge group of children" marched on their shop and threw a petrol bomb into the cafe and onto the roof.
"The children fought with the police and threw stones. I heard shots being fired off for ages," said a shaken Modipa.
"The group of 500 pupils bombarded the police with petrol bombs, they shot at them and threw bricks at them," said police spokesperson Superintendent Chris Wilken.
According to him, the police acted in self-defence and used live ammunition to defuse the situation because there were no public order police at the scene to stabilise the situation.
The tension continued later on Tuesday afternoon when the pupils kept firing shots and throwing rocks, stones and petrol bombs at cars and houses. Roads were strewn with rocks and tyres were set alight at busy intersections.
The pupils later regrouped at a nearby taxi rank, stoning police and throwing a petrol bomb at a police vehicle, De Villiers said.
Around 3.30pm, a group of 57 pupils stormed the Alexandra police station to demand the release of the arrested pupils.
The pupils managed to establish that the shop owner had not killed the student. However, they believed now that he had housed the man they suspected of the murder.
"This man was earlier taken into protective custody. The rioting pupils wanted him set free so that mob justice could be meted out," De Villiers said.
Meanwhile, witnesses in other parts of the township said the rioting continued unabated, with pupils vandalising and throwing petrol bombs at vehicles.
"They are killing our children. We don't want them here!" screamed one angry parent while pointing at the police.
Two journalists' vehicles were petrol-bombed and another reporter's car was vandalised.
A rioter threw a brick and a petrol bomb at the car of a Business Day journalist and photographer shortly after they got out of their vehicle.
All their belongings were destroyed and the car was gutted.
A Beeld photographer also had his vehicle petrol bombed.
702 Talk Radio journalist Mark Klusener told Sapa the mob threw a brick into his vehicle, ripped out all the seats and stole his belongings.
He described the situation as "very volatile", saying rampaging pupils were attacking the cars of innocent passersby, despite a strong police presence.
Police also fired off a number of rubber bullets when people started shooting at them from a building while they were trying to extinguish a burning vehicle.
The Congress of SA Students blamed the police for fuelling the violence.
"We just wanted the man who shot one of our pupils, but what the police have done now is totally unfair," said Cosas spokesperson Johnny Legangane.
Legangane said several pupils were wounded in scuffles with police and were taken to the Alexandra Clinic.
"Their actions remind one of 1976 when students were shot at random. Today the police wanted to kill," he said.
The Gauteng department of education condemned the disruptions.
Education MEC Ignatius Jacobs appealed to pupils to calm the mob down and to get them back to the classrooms to learn.
"Our department is scheduled to meet with the National Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, National Police Commissioner, Jackie Selebi and the Gauteng MEC for Safety and Liaison where we will discuss the events in Alexandra," Jacobs said.
Gauteng Safety and Liaison MEC Nomvula Mokonyane appealed to the residents of Alexandra to remain calm.
"I wish to appeal to the community to assist the police in making sure that, whatever problems they have, they do not allow lawlessness and wanton destruction of property to prevail," Mokonyane said.
Mokonyane said he was in constant touch with local police in the area and had been informed that though the situation was tense, relative tranquillity had been restored.
Narrow escape for photographer
One of Beeld's photographers, Schalk van Zuydam, had a narrow escape himself on Tuesday afternoon while covering the violence in Alexandra. Not only did a would-be criminal try to steal his camera equipment but the company car he had been driving was stripped and then torched.
After parking the vehicle at the school where the crowd had gathered Van Zuydam followed the mob to the police station. At one stage a student grabbed at his camera which was slung around his neck and tried to rip it free.
"I screamed at him and he ran off but a short while later three students came and warned me that thugs in the area were determined to steal my equipment."
These students then accompanied Van Zuydam to the Alexandra Community Centre where one of the local Community Policing Forum officials agreed to escort him back to his car.
"When we got close to the school I met up with other media people who told me my car had been stripped of its wheels, windows, everything. I couldn't believe it. I said it was impossible as I had left it in a safe place," said Van Zuydam.
"The CPF guy and I got to the car and I couldn't believe what I saw. It had been totally stripped.
"I then returned to the office."
"The last I heard was when I got a call from a photographer who told me that the car had been set alight," said Van Zuydam. - Beeld/Sapa
News24
31-5-2000


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Source: M&G
Title: Troops, police pour into Cape Flats
Date Published: 31-5-2000
Today`s Date: 1-6-2000
Comments:
STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Wednesday 10.15am.

HUNDREDS of police and military reinforcements were deployed on the Cape Flats on Wednesday morning, in a bid to defuse the violent conflict between taxi drivers and the Golden Arrow bus company.
Taxi drivers and passengers were searched at roadblocks set up at exit points from the suburbs of Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and Nyanga from 5am.
Numerous taxis were found to be unroadworthy or not to have necessary permits, and their drivers were fined.
In Khayelithsha, commuters grumbled that they would be late for work and resented being made to stand in the rain while being searched, while taxi drivers complained that the operation is costing them money.
Police confiscated guns from some taxi drivers, saying they are to be sent for ballistics testing.
The operation came a day after Golden Arrow bus drivers marched through the streets of Cape Town to call for more to be done to end the violence, which has already claimed three lives.
Taxi drivers want Golden Arrow to increase its fares, cut down on the number of routes it operates and not service townships on weekends, and have increasingly used violence to press home their demands.
The violence has spread beyond the public transport sector.
Nine vehicles belonging to the Cape Town city council have also been attacked, and its staff and officials have been threatened at gunpoint, prompting the council to suspend some of its services to Khayelitsha.
M&G
31-5-2000


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Source: M&G
Title: Mbeki collects millions for Zim land redistribution
Date Published: 31-5-2000
Today`s Date: 1-6-2000
Comments:

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday 12.15pm.

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has persuaded Saudi Arabia and the Nordic states to put up R100- million to buy farms in Zimbabwe for redistribution to blacks.
The Zimbabwe government will use the money to buy 118 farms from white owners who have already indicated that they are prepared to sell their land, according to the director general in Mbeki's office, Frank Chikane.
Chikane said the aim was to move blacks occupying white-owned land in Zimbabwe onto the 118 farms and bring an end to the violence which has accompanied the land invasions.
"Then one could move the people occupying the land onto the farm area that has been secured so we could stop the violence."
Mbeki's spokeswoman Tasneem Carrim told journalists on Wednesday the money will be channeled through the United Nations Development Programme.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's war veterans will continue occupying white-owned farms despite the upcoming elections, according to their leader, Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi.
In an interview on SABC television he denied statements that the occupations will cease ahead of the June 24-25 general elections and said that farms in the Mashonaland province will be allocated on Wednesday to landless peasants and veterans of the independence war.
"I have not been going out into the provinces to tell the war veterans to pull out of farms. That is wishful thinking ..." Hunzvi said.
He has been touring farms earmarked for occupation. More than 1 500 white-owned commercial farms been occupied since February by landless blacks led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war against white rule.
Political violence linked to the farm occupations has killed 27 people, including four white farmers, in the past three months. -- AFP

M&G
31-5-2000


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Source: IOL
Title: Solution to theft case in the bag
Date Published: 30-5-2000
Today`s Date: 1-6-2000
Comments:

May 30 2000 at 11:07AM
South Africa may as well have its own version of the television programme, America's Dumbest Criminals, after a Durban car thief left behind a bagful of personal documents, including his birthday photographs and home address.

The suspect had just hot-wired the bakkie of Robin Maharaj of Mountbatten Drive in Reservoir Hills, Durban, and was attempting to free the steering lock in the road, when passing policemen stopped to investigate.

The suspect ran off, dropping a red bag in the process. Police fired a shot at the fleeing suspect, but missed.

Police recovered a bag containing personal belongings of the suspect, possibly a high school pupil.

In the bag, police found schoolbooks, which gave the name of the pupil and his school, a shirt, a tie, two photograph albums and possibly his home address.

This scenario could have come straight from America's Dumbest Criminals, broadcast on local television every Saturday night.

Police are expecting an early arrest.
IOL



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Source: News24
Title: Mpuma police crack down on bogus doctors
Date Published: 30-5-2000
Today`s Date: 1-6-2000
Comments:
Middelburg – Mpumalanga police have arrested three rural homeopaths after they allegedly pretended to be doctors and prescribed powerful scheduled medicine to unsuspecting patients.
Acting provincial police commissioner Denn Alberts said on Tuesday the arrests were part of a special crackdown on "rogue" homeopaths in the province's deep rural regions.
"These people are extremely dangerous because they are only herbalists and are not experts in scheduled medicines. They also seem to be targeting poor illiterate communities that don’t know how to tell real doctors from fakes," said Alberts.
One of the suspects, 45-year-old Majoro Letchela, appeared briefly in the Groblersdal Regional Court on Tuesday but was released so that he could continue undergoing treatment for a psychiatric disorder.
Police allegedly found over R10 000 worth of scheduled medicine at Letchela’s "surgery", in contravention of the Medicines Control Act and the Homeopathy Council regulations.
Fellow homeopath and herbalist "Dr" Godfrey Nkuna was also arrested on Monday after police found over R40 000 worth of scheduled medicine in his offices.
Some of the medicines appeared, Alberts said, to have been stolen from government hospitals because they were clearly marked "for State use only".
Nkuna has been charged both under the Medicines Control Act and for theft but was not asked to plead when he appeared briefly in the Moutse Magistrates' court on Tuesday and the case was postponed to 26 June.
Alberts said police also arrested a third suspect, "Dr" Mbulelo Mgwenyi, last week on Friday, when investigators found R40 000 of scheduled medicine at his offices.
Mgwenyi appeared briefly in the Moutse Magistrates' Court on Monday and was released on his own recognisance when the case was postponed to 15 June.
All three suspects are registered as homeopaths but, Alberts said, told patients they were doctors and could therefore prescribe potentially dangerous medicines to often illiterate patients.
"More breakthroughs involving this kind of medical practitioner are expected soon, but we urge communities in the interim to make sure that their doctors are qualified and registered with the Medical Council of South Africa," said Alberts. - African Eye News Service
News24
30-5-2000


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