Fight against killer soldiers could go straight to ConCourt

Collins Khosa’s loved ones are taking their fight for justice to the highest court in the land in a desperate bid to avoid a repeat of what happened to the 40-year-old father-of-three.

Khosa died at his home in Alexandra on Good Friday, allegedly after a vicious assault at the hands of soldiers over a half-full cup of alcohol that was found in his yard.

His death came on the back of a barrage of reports of military and police brutality since the start of the national lockdown and the deployment of the country’s security forces to the streets to enforce it, last month.

In a moving affidavit deposed to as part of an urgent and direct access application filed in the Constitutional Court this week, Khosa’s partner, Nomsa Montsha, said if these reports had received the attention they deserved, “my life partner might still be alive, and his children might not be orphans”.

She said Khosa’s death was symptomatic of “a wider problem of police brutality and violence”.

“[We] have lost a loved one to this lockdown brutality and – considering the numerous public reports of other incidents of lockdown brutality, including at least four other deaths – we anticipate that more civilians will suffer the same fate, if nothing is done to curb this unbridled brutality by members of the security forces,” said Montsha.

In her affidavit, she described in detail how on that fateful day two female soldiers burst into their home asking about an unattended camping chair and half-full cup of alcohol in the yard, and dragged Khosa out into the street.

She said they wanted to “prove a point”.

A short while later, back-up – in the form of more soldiers and officers from the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department – arrived.

Montsha said the soldiers poured beer on Khosa and that one held his hands behind his back while another choked him.

“They slammed him against the cement wall; they hit him with the butt of a machine gun; they kicked, slapped and punched him on his face, stomach and ribs; and they slammed him against the steel gate,” she said.

“During the entire incident, I kept shouting that they must stop hurting Mr Khosa as they were going to kill him. My plea was ignored.”

Montsha said she was also assaulted when she tried to escape back into the house.

“The SANDF members came after me and kicked the door open. They ordered me to come outside, and one member started whipping me with a sjambok over my body and my face.”

After the soldiers and police eventually left, Khosa “started vomiting, losing his speech and consciousness, and progressively, he lost his ability to walk”.

“I rested him on the bed. I sat on the side of the bed trying to comfort him. However, about three hours after the SANDF members had left, while holding my hand, I noticed that he was not moving,” said Montsha.

By the time paramedics arrived, Khosa was already dead.

Montsha said the family had been left “in a state of absolute shock and trauma”.

“We are emotionally obliterated and have lost complete faith in the security forces, and the SANDF in particular,” she said.

Montsha – together with Khosa’s elderly mother and his brother-in-law, who are also listed as respondents in the court papers – are seeking extensive relief from the court, including an order that the soldiers and police who were at Khosa’s house on the day of his death, be rendered off duty and disarmed – at least until the end of the lockdown – pending the outcome of an investigation.

They also want an investigation team, headed up by a retired judge, established to probe Khosa’s death and “the treatment of any other person whose rights may have been infringed during the lockdown at the hands of the police service, the defence force and the metropolitan police”.

Asked for comment yesterday, the spokesperson for the department of defence and military veterans, Siphiwe Dlamini, said only that his offices would “allow the law to take its course to the conclusion of the matter”.

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