Mamelodi pleads for Bheki Cele’s intervention over gang reign of terror

Mamelodi residents in Tshwane have pleaded with Police Minister Bheki Cele to launch a task team to probe activities of a marauding gang of thugs alleged to have residents under siege through violence, extortion and demanding cuts from tenders and business deals.

The gang allegedly collects protection fees from local businesses, big or small, as well as from ordinary people, including recycle material collectors.

Residents are so frightened that that the mere mention of the words “Boko Haram”, as the gang is known, is enough to end a conversation as the gang is notorious for brutally silencing those who stand in their way or refuse to cooperate and pay a protection fee.

In September last year, activist Daniel Sello, 51, was shot five times while sleeping on his bed at the Mamelodi Hostel in an attack that the DA in Tshwane blamed on the gang as the party’s Ward 38 chairperson had clashed with the gang members and had previously laid charges against them.

“I do not want to die, please,” a resident said, before walking away, when by approached by The Citizen about the gang.

A community leader, who asked not to be named, said they had lost faith in the local police as nothing had been done about the gang despite numerous complaints.

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“Residents are paralysed with fear because the group is clearly above the law. We have been making noise about this matter, it is the talk of the township, everyone knows about the gang but no one will stand up because they will be killed. The gang is also growing in impunity, number and power” the leader said.

The township is not new to alleged extortion gangs, with taxi boss Vusi “Khekhe” Mathibela – dubbed “Number One Tsotsi” by Cele, accused of running a similar extortion ring before his arrest for the murder of North West businessman Wandile Bozwana.

Bozwana was gunned down five years ago on the N1 highway, at the Garsfontein offramp in Pretoria East, when gunmen opened fire on the car he was travelling in with his partner, who was severely injured in the shooting.

Mathibela and co-accused Sipho Hudla, Matamela Robert Mutapa and Bonginkosi Paul Khumalo have pleaded not guilty to Bozwana’s murder. Mathibela has strongly denied the extortion claims despite businesspeople speaking of an extortion ring boss, whose group of armed and violent henchmen moved around collecting money from them.

Themba Masango, founder of Not In May Name movement in the township, said Cele needed to pay attention to the festering crime in the townships, saying residents lived like prisoners in their own homes.

“Crime is getting out of hand in the townships and the minister need to do something urgently about this matter. We want to see tangible actions on the ground, police must do their jobs to curb this lawlessness,” he said.

Cele will on Friday release the 2020 quarterly crime statistics, reflecting crimes that occurred from between October 2020 and December 2020 last year.

These statistics will show the crime levels during the time when the country was placed under lockdown level 1 and adjusted level 3, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

siphom@citizen.co.za