(Illustrative image | sources: EPA / Kim Ludbrook | Daily Maverick / Leila Dougan) 
This article was originally published by Viewfinder and GroundUp.
Few criminal cases against the police receive as much public attention as the killing of 16-year-old Nathaniel Julies, who had Down syndrome, in Eldorado Park on 26 August. Julies was laid to rest on Saturday.
The reaction from investigators and prosecutors was also decisive. Within a week, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) arrested three police officers. The suspects have all appeared in court, charged variously with murder, accessory to murder and defeating the ends of justice. Police minister Bheki Cele visited Julies’ family and vowed that justice would be served if the accused police officers were found guilty.
“I’m just glad that they are apprehended… that they are in custody,” Cyril Brown, a Julies family representative,
reporters after two of the officers appeared in the Protea Magistrate’s Court last Monday. “We just hope that there are no glitches in the case and that justice will take its course… For now, we are quite happy with the proceedings.”
But, such satisfaction and an outcome – justice for Nathaniel Julies’ family – would be an exception.
A new Viewfinder analysis has found that almost none of the cases of children allegedly killed by the police, or of those who have died in custody in recent years, have resulted in police officers being held accountable.
A snapshot of children allegedly killed by police in South Africa
IPID’s case data contains a field for the age of people who have died “as a result of police action” or “in police custody”. This field is often blank, but where details are recorded it is possible to isolate a sample of deceased children. According to this data, excluding cases where children reportedly died in road accidents, IPID investigated the killings and deaths in custody of at least 39 children between April 2012 and March 2018.
As with almost any cross-section of the police watchdog’s case data, this sample contains descriptions of excessive violence by police officers.
In September 2013, a Cato Manor police officer shot 17-year-old Nqobile Nzuza in the back during a protest by Durban-based shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
In December 2014, a Melmoth police officer allegedly shot his girlfriend’s three children with his service firearm when he suspected her of infidelity. Four-year-old Sphamandla Ndlanzi was killed while his two teenage sisters survived.
In March 2015, also near Melmoth in KwaZulu-Natal, police allegedly killed three-month-old Ntandoyethu Mdunge when they raided a homestead in search of illegal firearms. According to IPID’s complaint description, the baby was strapped to her mother’s back and died after a police officer pushed the woman into a wall.
In September 2015, a police officer allegedly beat 16-year-old Thulani Ndlela to death with a concrete block in Kwadukuza, KwaZulu-Natal.
In December 2015, 17-year-old Austin Goliath was found hanging by his socks in a police cell in Piketberg, Western Cape. In 2019, Viewfinder analysed IPID’s docket in this case and concluded that the investigator probably never attended the scene, much less conducted a thorough investigation.
In March 2016, police allegedly shot 11-year-old Anqobile Sikhweza in the back when they fired “warning shots” at protesters demanding electricity services in Ntabankulu’s Sidakeni township, Eastern Cape.
In May 2016, police arrested 17-year-old Rasedupe Rampopo in Kroonstad in the Free State “for questioning about the theft of chairs”. As they led the boy away, one officer apparently told Rampopo’s mother that they would teach her son a lesson. According to IPID’s complaint description, Rampopo was later “found dead” near a bridge. The cause of death was recorded as “suffocation”.
In October 2017, eight-year-old Damin Swart died at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital reportedly after a stun grenade exploded in his face when police tried to disperse a crowd in Kraaifontein, Western Cape.
Of the 39 cases in the sample, according to available data as at March 2019, the murder of Nqobile Nzuza is the only one to have led to a criminal conviction. In the two disciplinary convictions for “murder” emanating from the sample, the sentences were light: a “dismissal, wholly suspended for two months” in a case related to the death in custody of a 15-year-old boy in Komga, Eastern Cape in November 2013; and, a “verbal warning” for the fatal shooting “from behind” of a 17-year-old boy near Somerset West in March 2015.
Despite this low conviction ratio, many of the cases were marked as “closed” or “completed” and reported as statistical successes in IPID’s annual reports.
IPID’s habit of “completing” superficial investigations to inflate performance statistics – a practice that obstructed justice for victims and allowed perpetrators in the police to escape accountability – was the subject of Viewfinder’s exposé on the directorate in 2019.
Viewfinder also analysed the outcomes of tens of thousands of criminal cases against the police, registered by IPID between 2012 and 2019, and found that only around one in 100 such cases led to a criminal conviction. The ratio is slightly higher if one also takes disciplinary convictions into account.
Victims’ families are disillusioned with IPID
From our interviews with surviving victims and with the families of people allegedly killed by police, Viewfinder has deduced that this ratio is underpinned by widespread disillusionment with the police watchdog’s investigators and processes.
These families and victims bemoan the apparent low quality of IPID investigations and a lack of feedback from caseworkers (feedback which these officials are legally obliged to give). For instance, Viewfinder has engaged at length with the families of two men who died after alleged assaults by the police during the first few days of Covid-19 lockdown enforcement. Both families still feel stonewalled by IPID.
“I just feel very disappointed in everything – IPID’s case… and the fact that they don’t let me know anything,” said Valene Meintjies, whose stepfather, Petrus Miggels, died of a heart attack in Ravensmead, Western Cape, shortly after he was allegedly assaulted by the police on the first day of lockdown.
“I don’t believe that IPID is doing enough to bring the police to book,” said Thembi Nkosi, whose brother, Ishmael Gama, was allegedly tortured with boiling water and beaten to death with a brick by police after he was apprehended for stealing car parts at a police pound in Lenasia, Gauteng, on 1 April.
“I’m entirely dissatisfied (with IPID) because they only give information when I’m the one reaching out and my family still has too many unanswered questions as to why the case has not gone to court.”
Sometimes, IPID’s failure to arrest perpetrators or to give feedback leave victims’ families in limbo for years. This was a central theme in A Killing in the Winelands, Viewfinder’s documentary film of 2019 which followed Atang Thokoane, a migrant worker from Lesotho, as he revisited the murder of his brother by police in De Doorns, Western Cape, in 2013.
Another case from 2013 relates to the murder of 15-year-old Damian Arendse who was fatally shot in the back, allegedly by a police officer, in Wesbank on the Cape Flats in December 2013. Damian’s case was one of those in the data sample analysed above.
Over the six years following her son’s murder, Klarina Arendse says that she has consistently tried to get an answer from IPID’s caseworker and from the prosecutor to whom the docket was referred. Her requests for feedback have been snubbed, she says. Viewfinder’s queries about the case to IPID and the NPA also went unanswered.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/IMG_4758.jpg "Klarina Arendse's 15-year-old son, Damian Arendse, was shot and killed, allegedly by police, in Wesbank in December 2013. (Photo: Anton Scholtz)")
Arendse says: “What happened in Eldorado Park, that boy was 16 years old… I sympathise with the family… The attention that family gets, from the media, from Bheki Cele, policemen are being locked up, but for my child no one was locked up… I can’t think why the one gets justice and the other one does not get justice, because they were both children… I’m so devastated.”
IPID recommits to improve as the new leader seeks to prove herself
Apart from the swift arrests, another remarkable aspect of IPID’s response to the Julies case was the visibility of the watchdog’s new head Jennifer Dikeledi Ntlatseng. It was not common for Ntlatseng’s predecessors to present themselves, as she did, at the scene of a crime and to speak freely with reporters. She
