Whoonga attacks: Innocent run for cover
Whoonga attack: No arrests, says SAPS
BROKEN bones, fractures, black eyes, cracked ribs and many cuts and bruises are just some of the injuries inflicted on a homeless group in Glenwood after the violent eruption at Whoonga Park on Monday night.
The attack on the homeless by vigilantes armed with sticks, planks with nails and knobkerries exploded suddenly at about 7pm.
Patrick Gaza, an elderly homeless man who lives in the park on Davenport Avenue left Albert Park about two years ago when whoonga addicts infested the place. He had no idea that the violence he tried so desperately to get away from would follow him into the suburbs.
Formerly from Nongoma, Gaza, a tailor by trade, moved to Durban to find a job and worked at a men’s boutique in the CBD for years before he lost his job. Since then, he has been living on the streets trying to make ends meet. “I wash cars now at The Workshop to earn a living but now these people broke my hand,” he said.
Gaza together with other homeless individuals who he described as being like “family,” each looking out for the other was beaten when the mob attacked him near Clark Road.
Sandile Gumede, a car guard who works near Davenport Centre met Gaza at a shop and was walking back to work when he was cornered by the mob.
“I suspected something was wrong when I went back to work. I saw14 guys. they said “Hey, come here” and I asked, “What’s wrong? There were so many of them, coming from all over. They ran and caught me and just started hitting me and everyone else, even the old people were beaten.
“I fell down and they started hitting me with the sticks and steel bars then kicked me into the ground,” he explain in almost a whisper.
Gumede said if it hadn’t been BCSF members, Heather Rorick and Marcel Whatley, of the Fish Deli who screamed and shouted at the mob to leave him, he would be dead.
Gumede said he too had fled Whoonga Park some time ago because he was trying to make an honest living. “They (whoonga addicts) don’t like me and always say I disturb them when they come to steal because I’m a car guard. Now these people hit me because they think I’m an addict,” he said.
The young car guard was rushed to King Edward Hospital where he was treated and sent “home” with gauze to clean his wound. His left hand is in a sling and he is not sure if the bone has been fractured. His left eye is swollen shut and his cheek has been split.
Few managed to evade the vigilantes. Women, the elderly and street children were among the victims. Slindile Ndlovu managed to run away from the mob and sought refuge at the Fish Deli. She watched in horror as others, including her boyfriend, were brutally attacked and felt helpless to do anything to help them.
“It was like a scene from a horror movie”
Marcel Whatley, owner of the Fish Deli where some of the homeless found refuge was shocked by the violence that erupted on the streets of Glenwood.
“If we weren’t here we would have had at least four dead bodies on our doorstep. Heather (Rorick) and I were sitting outside when we noticed some guys running.
“Initially we joked, thinking they were trying to get away with a petty crime, butnd then we saw the mob and more people running up the road.
“Six men surrounded a young girl and started beating her, it was awful, they were kicking her while she lay on the ground. It was like being in a scene from a horror movie gone wrong!”
Whatley said he and Rorick could only scream and frantically shouted for help and for the mob to leave the people alone. The response from the vigilantes was chillingly ominous.
“We are taking the law into our own hands,” they said, as he and Heather pleaded for them to leave.
Whatley watched in horror as another of the men flung a girl who was carrying shopping bags, across the road. From where he and Heather stood, they could hear the tearing of her bones.
“I couldn’t on my conscience see a child murdered and do nothing. We screamed so loud for them to go and let police handle any crime, but they swore at us and the police,” he said.
