Independent monitoring groups expressed concern about the rise in the number of people who have disappeared in mysterious circumstances, including those who according to police have escaped from custody. Evidence heard in various court applications linked the police to some of these disappearances. There has also been criticism of the character of police investigations into disappearances of detainees and others.
These developments have increased the fears of those concerned about relatives or friends whom they have not seen after allegedly escaping from jail.
- Johannes Maisha Stanza BOPAPE (28) recently disappeared after police alleged that he had escaped from detention. Bopape, the general secretary of the Mamelodi Civic Association (MCA) and a staff member of the Community Resource and Information Centre (CRIC), was detained on 9 June under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act. On 12 June, as part of their investigations, police say they took Bopape to Vereeniging by car. They alleged that while a flat tyre was being replaced, Bopape escaped from his captors. On 17 June, in one of several communications with Bopape's lawyers, the police said on the telephone that he was still in detention. In a later press release, however, police claimed to have made an official report regarding his 'escape' on 13 June. It was only on 4 July that his lawyers were informed about it.
Police claimed that they did not publicise his escape sooner because they feared that this would undermine their investigations into the activities of the ANC in the area. This explanation failed to alloy the fears of Bopape's family and friends who maintained that there had been no signs of police investigation. None of Bopape's close associates, including his parents, had been questioned, nor had the police been to his home to investigate. 'An aura of very serious suspicion surrounds Stanza's position' said Beyers Naude, former general secretary of South Africa Council of Churches in a statement.
- In a continued bid to trace the whereabouts of three officials of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (PEBCO) who disappeared in May 1985 the relatives of one of them, Qaqawuli GODOLOZI, filed a second court application asking the Minister of Law and Order and the officer commanding the Alexandria Police Station to produce him. The other two missing men are Sipho HASHE and Champion GALELA. Affidavits from those who allegedly saw one or all of the missing men have linked their disappearance to police.
In a previous hearing which was held between 2-5 June 1987, Mewandile (Mzwandile) FESI, an office cleaner at Port Elizabeth's Hendrick Verwoerd Airport, testified to seeing the three men being apprehended by seven white men outside the airport building on 8 May 1985, the day they disappeared. At least one of the men was wearing a police uniform, he said, while four others were in khaki camouflage and others were in plain clothes. The men had gone to the airport to meet a British diplomat.
Luvuyo BUYA, who was held at Algoa Park Police Station in Port Elizabeth at the same time, claimed to have seen Godolozi and some other black men in one of the rooms in the police station. At least three other inmates of Alexandria Police Station also testified to having seen Godolozi, Hashe and Galela at the police station. In August 1985 Victor Mkhosi SIZANI said he had seen Godolozi in one of the rooms at Alexandria Police Station with his head bandaged. Later on the same day, he saw Galela and Hashe in another room in the company of a white policeman and a black policeman known as Rasmeni. He also testified that a match box was thrown into his cell - it contained a piece of toilet paper on which the words 'it's me Godlozi (sic), who are you?' were written.
Although the Station Commander of Algoxia Police Station denied that the three detainees held in the police station at the time were PEBCO officials, two others arrested and held at the same police station at the time supported Sizani's evidence. C J Mouton, the state's representative in the case, had, according to Sizani tried to persuade him not to tell the court that he saw the three men. The case has been postponed indefinitely at the request of the state representatives.
