Eight Hours On The Beat

| Friday March 5, 2010 00:00

Mogoditshane Police Station has one of the vast, most dangerous, most crime prone jurisdictions in the country.The area stretches from Mogoditshane to Gabane in the west, to Kopong, Metsimotlhabe, Gakuto and Matseta in the north - an area whose reputation preceeds it. Here unarmed police are no match for the thugs. The death of one of the officers at the hands of a known thief and murderer, though happened a few years back is still fresh in the minds of the residents and colleagues. So dangerous is the Mogoditshane proper policing area, which Senthumole, Ledumadumane, Maipei, Tsolamosese, Smodern and Boseja that any resident would know of someone who has been a victim of crime perpetrated by the area's marauding gangs.

But the police are not daunted by the task facing them. They are determined to bring order to this chaos. For sometime now they have been, on a daily basis, patrolling the streets in the many pockets of their area of jurisdiction.

Our shift is scheduled to start at 10pm, shortly after the briefing. We hope to arrive in time... but we find ourselves starting the night shift before we can get to the office.

9.50 pm Khudiring - Legae area. A police van and a small crowd comprising the Mogoditshane-Gabane police operation team, a lone civilian man and about five women. A woman, with her hands on her head is wailing. We are told that her 26 year-old son has been stabbed by someone. He fled soon after being stabbed, seemingly out of confusion, with blood streaming down his body. Now the police and the small group, that turned out to be the young man's extended family, the young man's girlfriend and the man who was not related to the family were searching for him in the tall grass along the road where he was reported to have been last seen running. The man who stabbed him - a known thug - had already been apprehended and taken to the cells. Now and then the injured young man's mother would pierce the night sky with her wailing, inviting a scolding from an elderly woman in the group. We later learn that the elderly woman is the wailing woman's elder sister. The night shift promises to be a sombre affair as Greg soon realises he knows the wailing woman and her apparently injured son. They are his parent's neighbours and therefore friends. The police, having realised we know the woman ask if we can help and transport her home. We do while the police go looking for the injured young man at Block 9 clinic.

'From Block 9 we are going to drop some of our men at Zebras Club and then go to Gabane,' the team leader tells us. We can join them if we wish, as he had already been briefed by the duty officer that we might join his team. We prefer, however, to join the other patrol team that will be at the other end of the village. We take the woman home and dash to the police station.

10.30pm: Injured son foundThe woman calls to say someone had found her son lying in a pool of blood at his auntie's place. Ironically we had passed by the house earlier on and the woman had called out to her sister to brief her on what had just happened. Not knowing her son was ion the house, unable to shout for help, and choking in his own blood, she had given up and gone to her house-which lies some hundred meters further down the road. The police sergeant on duty tries to find a vehicle to go to the rescue. There is no vehicle available and all the other vehicles are engaged either out of Mogoditshane village or in some similarly serious situation. (We learnt the next morning at 11.30am that doctors at the Accident and Emergency Department at the Princess Marina Hospital were working around the clock to save the young man's life after someone helped transport him to the hospital).

12 midnight: Car patrol Three armed soldiers, two police officers, a man, a woman and two journalists. We head for Legae bar - the place where the young man was reportedly stabbed. About 150 people - young people mainly in their 20's and early 30's are milling about, many of them boisterous and rude. ' Hei wena thuntsha! [hey you, shoot!]' One of the young men hollers to the soldiers, mocking them. The mission however is to ensure the bar is closed. The police-woman leading the team gives a stern warning to the bar attendants and the door-keeper/watchman: 'If we come back here and find the people still here, we will know that you continued to sell after we told you to stop, and we will charge you accordingly.' The attendant promises they are closing and we leave. 

It's a busy month-end Friday night and there are two festivals taking place tonight. One is by a popular Kwasa-kwasa singer and is slated for the Zebras Club in the heart of Mogoditshane. Another sensation, Slizer is launching an album in Kopong.

012.30am: Time to close shopWe are in the area immediately in front of Mogoditshane Car World and Builders World. A much bigger crowd throngs this place. It is literally flesh pressing against flesh. Thick cigarette smoke, beer bottles being popped open all around. Beer bottles being carelessly thrown, breaking, trampled up or ground by cars. In the midst of the melee are a couple dozen sellers of braaied meats and boerwores. The two police officers warn them that it is late and that they should have stopped selling by now.

1.00am: Passage walkIt is time to search the passages. We walk around Car World towards Jacaranda bar, through the passage between the bar and Builders World, towards Zebras Club. A young woman pulls down her jeans and squats in front of the 6-man-1-woman team. She gets a stern warning from the policewoman, quickly gets up and pulls her jeans. An argument ensues about what she was doing. She claims she was just tightening her belt. A warning that she might be taken in silences her.

We walk tentatively. The passage is wet with human urine. An occasion smell of human faeces drifts our way now and then, causing us to check our boots to see if we have walked over the excreta.

1.41am: Possessed womanA radio call has just come in to the effect that a woman is behaving a bizarre manner and has gotten herself hurt in the process. Possessed by some spirit, the woman had fallen along the way and a group of unruly young men had descended upon her, it appeared with intention to rape her while she was still in a trance. One of the soldiers asks the police officers if they are able to arrest spirits and the group, now filing into another passage, just across the road from Mogoditshane Motors, past former Lekadiba night club bursts into laughter. We find the young lady out of her trance, but she is in pain. She appears to have lost a toe-nail and has a swollen forehead. Her shins are grazed and she has difficulty walking. 'We had a problem understanding what she meant by 'Thokosiza' over and over again. We were spooked and didn't know what she wanted, so called for you,' said one of her rescuers.

Not knowing what to do about the woman's spiritual problem, but appreciating that she was in danger from the gangs, the policewoman called for a van that took the girl to hospital.

2.20am: Back to ZebrasWe tread back to Zebras Club, single file past that passage again. We meet a number of suspicious characters and the police stop and search them for possible weapons or stolen, or illegal items. Once at Zebras the police take the next 30 minutes ensuring the food sellers whom they instructed to close do so. Our van arrives. We are back at the station within five minutes.

3.00am: Charge OfficeA young man sleeps on the sofas by the reception area. Alone after his friends left him stranded he had gone to the police station for a safe place to wait for his father whom the police had already alerted to his presence.

Another young man, ostensibly Zimbabwean from his accent, walks in, bleeding. A group of thugs had caught up with him along the Gabane road, beaten him up and robbed him of his month's pay and cellphone.

The walls in this charge office tell the many stories that have been told here. From the black patchy marks deliberately made by disorderly people to the torn blinds. These are stories to be told even to posterity.

From the notice board a picture of a fugitive, Vincent Mkandla glares at us. Four empty jacket hooks lined behind the wall looking almost alive and forlorn.

3.45am: Enroute to KopongThe duty sergeant calls one of the vehicles to take The Monitor duo and three new faces to Kopong, which lies some 30 kilometres north of Mogoditshane. This time our group is minus soldiers. A call comes in. A man says he cannot find his child. The duty sergeant finds a vehicle and goes to the rescue.

4.19am: Sex in the carWe drive through Kopong towards the community hall where a music festival had been staged. The hall is deserted, but a black car stands in the middle of the village football ground. Two-love birds are busy making love, almost oblivious to the glaring light of our car. A knock on the window and the young man comes to his senses.

He struggles to open the car door as he works on his jeans and then the flyer. His woman friend sits in the car, like one stoned.

Asked why they are making love in the village playground, the young man claims they did not wantto disturb elders at home,but his woman friend whom he keepsreferring to as 'mmaetsho' [madam] sees nothing wrong with their act. 'it is private'. There is beer in the car. There is also a knife. Condoms litter the backseat. The police ask the lovebirds to lead the way to the kgotla, where they are charged and warned.

5.03am: Drive back to the station. The lovebirds appear to be following us, but soon decide to go back. One of the officers hazards a guess that they were probably going into the bushes to finish their business.

5.20am: Horrible accidentAs we pass the new Bokamoso Hospital we see the flicker of a fire-engine's neon light. There has been a horrible head-on collision. The sole occupant of a north-bound Toyota Corolla has died at the scene. The driver of the other vehicle, a Honda CRV is critically injured. His female companion sit behind the vehicle, herself fairly injured, but able to communicate with family by phone. The police, some of whom we had been with the previous day, and the fire-brigade use ferry the injured men and his companion to the hospital in an ambulance, while a police van comes for the corpse. I keep telling myself that I must know the other man who did not survive - his registration number looks so familiar. But then it is possible I could have seen it around town.

Seeing the dead man, it dawns on me, for the umpteenth time just how mortal we are. I realise it could have been me, or any of my colleagues lying there, then that old familiar tune, comes wafting quietly into my soul - AMAZING GRACE, sung by the Gaithers. I cast one last glance at the corpse, as the cock crows calling announcing the Sunday morning.

5.35am: Charge office:The young man who was robbed has apparently decided to stay the night. With the acute shortage of vehicles and officers the police had not been able to drive him home.

A puddle of blood creates a point of focus on the floor. The blood came from a man who had earned himself a head injury courtesy of a spanner. The spanner wielder was reportedly being cuckolded and he mistook the now-injured man for the culprit. When he (supposed culprit) dropped the woman off at her house the old man sent a wheel spanner flying towards his head, landing a bull's eye.

5.55am: Homeward boundI drop off my photographer and eager to get home step a little bit on the accelerator, then almost subconsciously ease the pressure somewhat as memories of that fatal accident flash into my head.6.00am: Home finally.

I close the door and the new morning out. A man could kill for the next three hours that I so desperately need before rushing to the office to write and submit my story. The first 10 minutes are torture as the events of the previous day force themselves into my mind. Little goblins gnawing away at my mind, scaring sleep away. Finally, mercifully good old sleep comes and takes me away to oblivion's soft bosom. The sun will be high up before I am finally up again, wide awake to face another day.