ALBERTON – They say they know their names, they know their faces – and they also know that when these men come lurking in the dark they are going to get a beating which will leave them bruised and sometimes even broken.
We meet on a Wednesday morning, cramped into a small room in Alberton North from, where Angels 4 Addicts operate.
The group of about 16 are all homeless, roaming and sleeping on the streets of Alberton.
The youngest of them speaking to us is 21 and he has been living on Alberton’s streets for the past five years.
One by one they tell their stories and all the stories have the same ending: when one of them is caught walking the streets alone, they will be followed, stopped, beaten and left to fend for themselves. Some of the faces familiar to them have disappeared for a time, then returned from where they were hiding – some have disappeared for good, never to be seen on the streets again.
“They come with bright lights, shining it into your face and then you can’t see. They come when we are sleeping or walking alone. They beat you with a stick, kick you when you are on the ground, use that thing that looks like a cell phone to shock you, arrest you without any proof that you have done anything wrong.”
The stick that is being described is a plastic stick with a ”knob-like thing at the one end, with spikes sticking out of it”.
“I can’t stand on the sidelines anymore and watch this happen; these are homeless people with nowhere to go. Yes, they have their addiction problems, but they are still people with rights,” said Jennie Bernard, who started Angels 4 Addicts in Alberton.
And on that note, a young woman pitches in and says: “Yes, we smoke nyaope, but it makes us sleep better.”
None of the victims want to be named out of fear that things will just get worse.
They tell of wounds which took weeks to heal, they show a broken arm which you can clearly see did not receive the medical attention it needed – mended sort of in a crooked way.
Apart from the beatings on the streets, there are stories about the men taking them into the South Crest koppies for a good beating. It is after one such beating that one of the victims disappeared for about six months.
Then the whispers start and you hear about some of them ending up in the holding cells at the Alberton SAPS, where they have cold water thrown at them in the winter months and are then let go; you hear about drive-by shootings where they are shot at with something like a paintball gun, using metal balls; they tell you how they are sometimes taken to a specific house in First Avenue, to be beaten up out of sight – and in all of this they claim that they have nowhere to go. The SAPS turns them away because they don’t have proof or registration numbers for the vehicles used when they want to lay charges.
“Sometimes they pick us up and drive us out of Alberton. We are dropped in Rosettenville and even further and we are told that they don’t ever want to see us in Alberton again.”
They carry on telling you how they are stopped and searched randomly: “I had to drop my pants to my ankles, in daylight, on the street, for everyone passing by to see while these people searched me.”
“It would seem that these vigilantes on the street dish out these beatings while trying to get names of dealers from the street dwellers. But we all know who the dealers are – we know where they stay. Why don’t the police just go and arrest the dealers then?” asked Jennie.
Standing accused of these assaults are former and present Alberton CPF members, Alberton police officers, Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department (EMPD) officers and reaction officers working for various security companies. The names of some of the accused are known to the RECORD.
Cornelia Rudman, working closely with Jennie, confirmed that the Alberton SAPS, under leadership of acting station commander, Lieut Col Ntuli, has undertaken to assist these people in opening dockets in the coming week.
