A video of uniformed Johannesburg police dragging a man behind their truck has sparked a homicide investigation and renewed fears of police brutality in South Africa, a country that has long struggled with the issue.
The video — which may be disturbing to some, and which was posted by Johannesburg’s Daily Sun on Thursday — shows several police dragging a man to a large truck. Police then appear to handcuff the man’s hands to the back of the truck and drive away, as a horrified crowd chases after it and another police vehicle follows behind.
The National Post reports the man, a taxi driver from Mozambique, was later found dead in his police cell of head injuries and internal bleeding. He had been arrested for parking illegally.
“Do you still think apartheid was any better?” Reads one of thousands of comments on the video. “As a country we are … moving backwards.”
But while South Africa’s police watchdog and police commissioner have both expressed “shock” and promised investigations, incidents like this are not uncommon in South Africa.
The issue came up again just last week, when news broke that Hilton Botha, the lead detective in the Oscar Pistorius case, faces attempted murder charges dating back to 2009.
Not long after those charges came out, Justice Malala — a South African writer and political analyst — argued in a column for The Guardian that police violence is only getting worse.
“So soon after the horrific shooting of 34 striking mine workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine last August by police, the Botha charges draw attention to this question,” he wrote. “Is democratic South Africa’s police service turning into a violent force akin to its apartheid predecessors?”
Photos: South African Man Dies After Being Chained To Back Of Police Van And Dragged To Death
A gut-wrenching video of the scene is all the more disturbing because the men who abused the Mozambican immigrant were uniformed South African police officers and the van was a marked police vehicle.
The graphic scenes of the victim struggling for his life shocked a nation long accustomed to reports of police violence.
“The visuals of the incident are horrific, disturbing and unacceptable. No human being should be treated in that manner,” said South African President Jacob Zuma.
The Daily Sun, a South African newspaper, posted video the footage Thursday and it was quickly picked up by other South African news outlets and carried on the Internet. It sparked immediate outrage about police behavior.
“They are there for safety, but we as a people fear them more,” said Johannesburg resident Alfonso Adams. “You don’t know who to trust anymore.”
Some of those in the crowd who watched the scene unfold in the Daveyton township east of Johannesburg shouted at the police and warned that it was being videotaped. The police did not seem at all concerned by all the witnesses and the presence of cameras as they tied Mido Macia, a 27-year-old from neighboring Mozambique, to the back of a police vehicle, his hands behind his head. At least three policemen participated in the incident. Macia was found dead in a Daveyton police cell late Tuesday.
“We are going to film this,” several onlookers shouted in Zulu as the police tormented Macia. One bystander can be heard on the videotape shouting in Zulu: `’What has this guy done?”
A murder probe is underway on the evidence that Macia suffered head and upper abdomen injuries, including internal bleeding, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, the police watchdog agency, said Thursday. The injuries could be from the dragging and he could also have been beaten later in police custody.
“The allegations are that he was dragged behind a vehicle and his head was bent on the police vehicle. There are also allegations of assault,” said the investigative unit’s spokesman Moses Dlamini.
“As horrific as it is, it is not exceptional. Hardly a week goes by without such stories of brutality,” said Jacob van Garderen, national director of Lawyers for Human Rights.
At first, Macia, dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, is dragged along the road by the vehicle at slow speed, the footage shows. He awkwardly tries to keep step even though he is almost horizontal above the ground. Then the van stops, two policemen pick up the legs of the taxi driver and drop them to the ground as the van picks up speed and drives off, beyond the view of the camera.
The police watchdog agency said the incident started just before 7 p.m. on Tuesday when the cab driver was allegedly obstructing traffic with his vehicle. Then Macia allegedly assaulted a constable and took his weapon before he was overpowered, the police investigative unit said.
Macia was found dead in a cell over two hours later by another policeman, according to the watchdog agency.
National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega “strongly condemned” what happened. South Africans are “urged to remain vigilant and continue to report all acts of crime irrespective of who is involved,” said Phiyega in a statement.
Phiyega has tried to upgrade the reputation of the South African police since her appointment last year. Last month, Phiyega told a group of police officials the standing of the force `’has been severely but not irreparably tarnished over the past several years.”
The problems, though, are immense for a police force that has expanded from some 120,000 to almost 200,000 over the last decade, “often failing to match the increase in quantity with sufficient quality,” said Johan Burger, who served for 36 years on the force before becoming a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.
Several experts contacted by The Associated Press also said that in recent years there has been an increasing willingness to use a shoot-to-kill approach to the crime and violence.
An average of 860 people a year died in police custody or as a result of police action between 2009 and 2010, up from 695 a year from 2003 to 2008, according to Burger of the security studies institute.
Further staining the reputation of the police is the Marikana shootings when, on Aug. 16, 2012, a line of South African police opened fire on a crowd of striking miners, killing 34 at a platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg. A judicial commission is investigating allegations that many were killed in a rocky hill, near the much-filmed initial scene of the attack, shot in the back as they tried to escape.
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