In March 2020, seven people were murdered in a mass shooting in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. A Western Cape High Court judgment now reveals that a witness said cops endangered his life by telling gangsters he had made a statement to the police.
A witness to a shooting that claimed the lives of seven people and left several others wounded, including a six-year-old girl, was hesitant to approach police officers at the scene.
This was because some of the gunmen were present, pretending to be onlookers.
Instead, the next morning, on 8 March 2020, the witness known as Mr X went to the South African Police Service (SAPS) in Khayelitsha along with two others.
"They told [a] detective of their mistrust of some of the police at Site B police station as they socialised with [a member of The Guptas gang] and his friends," Judge Daniel Thulare found in a judgment delivered on Wednesday, 22 November.
In those gangster-controlled streets of the townships, the Bill of Rights do not apply and a constitutional state is a myth.
"The detective wanted to take their statements but they did not give the statements as the police who they knew socialised with [The Guptas gangster] and his friends kept themselves busy close by."
'Guptas gang had cop informers'
Mr X eventually gave the police information, but this leaked to The Guptas gang and Mr X believed that "the Guptas had informers including within the SAPS...