Police form unit to combat cattle rustling

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer | Friday January 29, 2010 00:00

Although the crime has affected many areas including Bobirwa and Kweneng, it has become particularly worrying in the Kgatleng District where numerous cases have been brought before the magistrates' court in Mochudi.

In an interview with Kgosi Kgafela II of Bakgatla last year, it was revealed that an organised gang of unemployed young men and boys of school-going age had turned the Kgatleng district into a cattle rustling hub. The cattle-posts in the western and eastern parts of Madikwe River, covering Mfetlhedi, Legokonyane, Monametsane and Moduwane, where they steal unbranded calves, are particularly targeted.

Explaining the way the gang operates, Kgafela said: 'They have been stealing from my father's kraal. When they see a calf without a mark, they take it and brand it. Normally you would find that they use a syndicate members' brand (Tshipi).

The ringleader will then later brand it with his own mark. In the royal kraal, we found about four cattle with brand marks that belong to his acolytes. He is just a young boy who would normally not have as much property as so many cattle and a brand mark, yet he does. They go around branding people's cattle. We caught this guy and whipped him, even his parents encouraged us to whip him because they had tried to talk him out of stealing, but he would not listen,' said Kgafela.

'Bakgatla have been crying gore ba ruela mo ganong la gagwe. He has served six years in jail for stock theft after quitting his job at the BCL mine,' said Kgafela about the ringleader whose name has been disclosed to Mmegi.

One wonders why rustling is so rampant in the Kgatleng district. Is it because of any special reason that the district finds itself a target of such a crime? In his compelling book, the recently published, `When Rustling Became an Art`, local historian Fred Morton offers a historical explanation to the question.

It draws you to the 19th Century Mfecane wars, a period of turbulence in southern Africa that saw smaller and weaker groups succumbing to the stronger ones like the Zulu of Shaka and Mzilikazi`s Ndebele. Only the fittest survived, whilst the weakest were subjugated and sometimes incorporated into the stronger groupings. Cattle, by that time were an important economic tool, used not only for agriculture but also in trade where tribes battered for various goods. Raiding for cattle was a norm in that time and everyone with the might and ambition undertook this venture. Accumulation of herds of cattle boosted a tribal leader's position both economically and in power-relations. Thus a chief, whose morafe had a lot of cattle, was respected and feared by neighbouring tribes. The Bakgatla were such groups. They often times had to ward off marauding groups of the Ndebele and Boers and protect both their territory and cattle. 

'Pilane and his heirs were highvelders who planned to outlast each of these invaders and build an operation where they lived. They started rustling as a small, part-time family business to supplement trade in ivory, minerals, skins and other market items. The patriarchal kgosi, his brothers and uncles ran it, passing on their knowledge and skills to their sons and nephews,' reads the book in part.

Looking through the ways of those times, the chief and his people by rustling cattle, were not engaged in criminal acts, but rather survival endeavours that they used to accumulate wealth and consolidate power in a violent environment where you could just be raided for just looking weak. However, what is taking shape in Kgatleng district in this age is an eyesore as it violated laid down rules on how one has to go about amassing wealth. Stealth and might are no longer the means to economic strengthening. They disappeared with the Mfecane era.

To put to an end to rustling in Kgatleng, Kgafela II unleashed the newly initiated Madisankwe regiment. Last year the chief and the police mounted a joint manhunt and arrested some tribesmen suspected to have stolen livestock in various cattle-posts in the district.

The cattle and small stock were returned to their owners whilst the suspects were remanded in police custody.

Though the regiment is doing a sterling job on this front, it finds itself under scrutiny after some of its members were accused of unlawfully flogging tribesmen for various misdemeanours.

As the police, with its newly formed stock-theft unit joins forces with the mophato, one hopes that finally the problem of rustling will soon become a thing of the past.