Police held four community meetings in September, and another three in October, in response to rumours about a serial killer and body parts murders in Grahamstown, Joza Station Commander Colonel Syed Cassim told a lively audience at the Joza Indoor Sports Centre on Sunday 1 November. And in September, the Makana Council began addressing growing concerns about crime in the town.
Police held four community meetings in September, and another three in October, in response to rumours about a serial killer and body parts murders in Grahamstown, Joza Station Commander Colonel Syed Cassim told a lively audience at the Joza Indoor Sports Centre on Sunday 1 November. And in September, the Makana Council began addressing growing concerns about crime in the town.
Around 350 people attended the last of a series of meetings convened by the Ministers Fraternal, where police and councillors have faced questions from the community about last week’s looting of immigrant-run businesses, and crime in Grahamstown.
Eleven days after 300 township spaza shops were looted in what police and shopkeepers later said was a well-orchestrated two-hour blitz, their owners and families remain away from their homes and businesses.
Some left town to stay with families and friends. Around 500 people have since Wednesday 21 October – the day of the looting – been staying in a safe zone in the area.
After responding to the displaced families’ immediate needs for safety and shelter, food and clothing, local businesses, private individuals, NGOs, local government officials and the SAPS have met to discuss how to reintegrate them into their communities.
Last week councillors and police participated in a week-long campaign led by local church leaders in the form of the Ministers’ Fraternal. Area by area, since Tuesday 27 October, they have met residents, answering questions about the rumours, and consulting about how and when to bring back the shopkeepers.
Yesterday’s marathon meeting, four hours long, was the final one in this series, and an impressive array of the town’s civil and political leadership turned out.
Facing a vocal crowd that included Grahamstown residents, civil society organisation representatives, representatives of the displaced shopkeepers and members of the group calling themselves Voices of the Foreigners Wives, was an impressive showing of the town’s leadership.
It included 10 councillors, members of the Ministers’ Fraternal, the SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco), representatives of the Grahamstown Anti Xenophobic Group, as well as Rhodes University Vice Chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela.
Also present were representatives from the Pakistan South Africa Association, the South African Human Rights Commission, and the Commission for Gender Equality.
The meeting was chaired by the Ministers’ Fraternal’s Dumile Monakale.
The Mayor, Nomhle Gaga, and commanders of the Joza and Grahamstown Police Stations, Cassim, and Colonel Vuyisiwe Tembani, spoke to the crowd.
A number of other senior police officers were also present.
Cassim, of Joza Police Station, said the police had held community meetings on 17 and 18 September, and two on 21 September. Cassim said the police had discussed the rumours of a serial killer, and of body parts murders.
He said the police had confirmed there was no serial killer, and that there had been no body parts murders.
He said the police had also met with residents in Transit Camp, Extension 8 and Extension 9, on 19 October to share information with them and dispel the rumours.
Cassim said the area on which police had concentrated, based on information they had received, had not been looted on 21 October when 94 other spaza shops in Joza were.
“Police tried by all means to prevent looting,” Cassim said.
Police had arrested 85 people in connection with the looting, he said.
“Not one foreigner was injured.”
His last statement was in response to criticisms that the police had not done enough to stop the looters and protect the owners.
Police have since said their priority on the day of the looting had been to prevent injury and loss of life.
In response to accusations that police themselves had participated in the looting, Cassim said police had assisted in removing goods from some of the shops, at their owners’ request.
He said involved in investigating recent murder cases in Grahamstown had been a team that included the Dog Unit from Port Elizabeth.
He said top detectives on the Transit Camp and Mayfield cases, Captain Riaan Havenga and Detective Warrant Officer John Manzana, had 50 years’ experience between them.
Cassim said the specialist conducting autopsies on the bodies to determine the causes of death had 20 years’ experience in that work.
“We sent all information relating to the recent murders to a psychological investigator in Pretoria,” Cassim said. “He went through all the information and he confirmed that there is no serial killer involved in these murders.”
On Monday 26 October the police issued English and isiXhosa versions of a pamphlet dismissing the rumours.
The degree to which the rumours have become entrenched in the community became clear when earlier in the meeting, Cassim re-emphasised the pamphlet’s main points.
“There are no serial killers in Grahamstown,” Cassim said and the crowd, attentive until then, burst out in uproar.
Tembani later spoke about the fact forensics had found dogs had caused the mutilation on some of the bodies found in the veld.
She also noted that on average, 20 parolees a month were being released from prison.
On Friday 23 october, 20 women who identify themselves as Voices of the Foreigners’ Wives were joined by around 200 Grahamstown residents, Rhodes students and academics in a protest outside the Grahamstown City Hall. They sang, prayed and read a memorandum that presented facts about socio-economic hardship in Grahamstown and Makana Municipality’s failure to resolve service delivery deficits.
In subsequent media interviews and statements, they said the municipality had not done enough to help them, and that the police had not done enough to address the false rumours that foreigners were involved in body parts murders.
In a brief interview after the meeting, national commissioners on the Commission for Gender Equality, Pinkie Sobahle and Nomsisi Bata, told Grocott’s Mail they had come in response to what they had seen in the media.
For Sobahle, it was also because of what she had observed as a resident of Grahamstown.
On Friday 23 October they began a fact-finding mission that started with a meeting with the men among those being housed in the safe zone.
They then met the Voices of the Foreigners’ Wives group, at the premises of a local NGO.
“We noted that the men are secure [in the safe zone],” said Bata. “However, this group of women is vulnerable because they are scattered.“ Sobahle said,
“As custodians of gender equality in our country, we are also concerned because women have specific needs.”
She noted that many of the children of the displaced women had not been attending school since the looting began.
Reintegration
Human Rights commissioner Aubrey Mdazana told Grocott’s Mail their role was to emphasise to communities that people of foreign descent in South Africa have rights.
“We don’t want them to be forced to live in ghettoes,” Mdazana said. “It’s important that they are integrated into the community. We are here to ask the community to let that take place.”
Mdazana was also concerned that various roleplayers’ strategies for reintegration should be well co-ordinated.
He expressed frustration that at the meeting, people had been more focused on the causes of the events, rather than on the reintegration process.
“The discussions are still polluted by the allegations,” he said, “and it means it’s difficult to make progress on reintegration.”
Rebuilding
Ahmad Raza Butt, Raja Shahzad Hassain and Nasar Khan, from the Pakistan South Africa Association, said while they had come to support the Pakistani community affected by the looting, they would in fact be assisting all the displaced shopkeepers.
“Three hundred shops were affected,” Ahmad told Grocott’s Mail.
“Fifty of those are Pakistani-owed. But we will be helping all the affected shopkeepers – not just the Pakistani community.
“We do not know for sure whether the cause of this incident is really xenophobia, or something else. But we will anyway be offering help financially.”
Butt and Hassain said they would be fixing all the shops vandalised during or after the looting, “so they can get back to work, so that they can put their lives back together – financially and regain some morale.
“After that, we will see what we can do.”
Task team
Speaking about Makana Municipality’s role in trying to prevent the xenophobic looting, resolving it and helping the victims, councillor Mabhuti Matyumza said they had set up a task team on 29 September at a meeting in Z Street, Tantyi, for civil society to engage on combating crime in the community.
“And then [plain]criminal acts were substituted by xenophobic acts,” he said.
Matyumza said the municipality had called a stakeholders meeting on the day of the looting, and had since then been regularly convening meetings to co-ordinate actions to address the short-term and long-term needs of the displaced residents.
In her address at the start of the meeting, Makana Mayor Nomhle Gaga said the lesson from the past two weeks’ events was that Grahamstown needed to be vigilant.
“It should not be seen again that we are taken by surprise.”
She said it was not a time to point fingers.
“Let’s find a lasting solution to the real threat at hand,” Gaga said.
She said it was important for all those working to resolve the crisis to work together.
“We must not work in silos,” Gaga said.
She also asked for those involved to be thoughtful in their actions.
“I appeal to all of us to look at the manner in which we respond to violence,” she said.
Unemployed People’s Movement leader Ayanda Kota and the Voices of the Foreigners’ Wives group together left the meeting for a while.
Group member Jacqueline Khokan said it was because their leader, Kota, hadn’t been invited to address the meeting.
“They don’t want to give him a chance to speak on our behalf,” Khokan said.
Asked what the group would want Kota to say on their behalf were he given the opportunity, Khokan said, “We need them to look at the taverns. They are one of the places where a lot of crime is happening.”
Kota did in fact give an emotional address later on in the meeting.
*Story altered to put information about Council's role in addressing crme concerns near the beginning, as well as in thebody of the story.
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