30 YEARS OF DEMOCRACY: TEC’s ‘guarantee for a better South Africa’ didn’t help seven murdered pamphlet distributors
Seven young black men were this week sent to their deaths in the heart of the Natal war zone after being hired to distribute Transitional Executive Council (TEC) leaflets encouraging people to vote. The victims, all in their teens and twenties, were tortured for hours at an Ndwedwe area primary school and then hacked and burned to death. The principal and his bodyguard have been arrested with four other people.
The murders of even those engaged in non-party political promotion of the election came as opponents of the vote renewed their threats of a widening war. One of three men who managed to escape said some of the victims, part-time workers from Durban, were unaware of what they were distributing or where. An ANC belt was found lying across one of the bodies, but it is not known if it was taken from any of the corpses. One man is still missing.
The distributors drove in to Ndwedwe on Monday to hand out pamphlets explaining South Africa’s new Constitution and voting procedures. “Your guarantee for a better South Africa,” the leaflets declare. They are not party political but they do explain the rights of those who wish to vote. Throughout, the pamphlet emphasises that unlike the old apartheid system the new Constitution offers equal protection for all. But Thulane Ngcamu, 22, discovered that in parts of Natal it offers no protection at all.
Their minibus pulled up at the Tokomele primary school where they went in search of the principal, Elliot Shangase. He also turned out to be the local chief and Inkatha stalwart.
Shangase ordered the 11 into a classroom. Shortly afterwards a group of men carrying sjamboks, knobkierries and pangas arrived. Ngcamu said a shopkeeper called Mhlonishwa demanded to know if they were “comrades”.
“The principal rang the bell to close the school. The children went home and the principal left and the shopkeeper took over. That’s when things started to go wrong. They beat us and kicked me in the face and accused us of being comrades. They asked us what we wanted here. We explained we are here to distribute the pamphlets but they didn’t listen. They just kept torturing us,” he said.
Ngcamu counted 18 people taking part in the beatings. His face is swollen from a kick in the jaw and his back is still raw from the sjambokking. Other victims were burned with hot wire and cut with pangas. The torture went on for about two hours until the classroom walls and desks were bloodsoaked. Then each victim was pushed through the window and lashed together in pairs.
Ngcamu escaped when the man he was tied to broke free. While his captores fired at the fleeing man, Ngcam ran in the other direction. The others were not so lucky. They were tossed into a ravine, and hacked to death.
Ngcamu ran for his life until he was grabbed by a crowd who feared he was a thief. They returned him to Shangase. Apparently aware of the many witnesses, he ordered that the captive be handed over to the police. Only two others survived the killings. They included the minibus driver who was separated from the others and sent to the KwaZulu police station under armed escort. En route, his vehicle was set alight. He escaped and called his boss, Andy Cox, the owner of the firm contracted to dispense the leaflets across Natal and Treanskei. Four of the driver’s relatives are among the dead men.
Cox wept with sorrow and anger as he related the frustrations of trying to persuade the KwaZulu police to act. Eventually he called a brother-in-law in the South African Police (SAP) riot squad who sent help. An initial search after dark did not discover the bodies. Cox returned with the SAP on Tuesday and again sought KwaZulu police assistance.
“When I got here at 12 o’clock these guys had done nothing. They hadn’t even checked to see if there was anyone alive,” he said.
Cox approached the principal. “I knew he was involved. How could he leave those kids here with those other guys and not know anything about it? We got to the school and spoke to the teachers who claimed they were sick on Monday and hadn’t seen anything.
There was blood all over the walls, all over the desks, and they said they didn’t know anything. We weren’t far from the bodies but we didn’t know that at the time,” he added. They were discovered later on Tuesday.
Cox said his firm had already distributed 4 000 leaflets in Northern Natal with few problems except for a driver being chased away. He selected Ndwedwe and he was clearly not aware of the extent of the killings in the area over recent months. He says no one from the TEC warned him of any no-go zones.
“Obviously you read the newspapers, you see the TV and that. I knew it wasn’t exactly a hundred percent safe. But you don’t think it’ll happen to your guys,” he said.