Taxi boss tells Nkabinde Enquiry of arrest and torture by police

Chairperson of the Kwa-Maphumulo Taxi Association, Sphamandla Mhlongo, has told the Nkabinde Enquiry in Pretoria that, like most of his colleagues, he was arrested and tortured by the police.
Mhlongo testified that he was taken to the Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit’s offices, where he was repeatedly tortured until he was unconscious as police forced him to confess to a crime he never committed.
Members of the Cato Manor Unit have been accused by numerous witnesses who appeared before the enquiry of targeting and killing members of the Kwa-Maphumulo Taxi Association and then planting evidence at crime scenes.
Mhlongo is the seventh witness to testify before Justice Bess Nkabinde.
“I was taken to that office of theirs where it’s written on the wall, don’t say I’m us. You don’t say I don’t know. I was asked to strip naked. They use a rope to tie me to the chair so that I could not move. On that backrest of a chair, one of them was pressing me with a shoe so that I could not move. Then they placed the plastic over my head so that I could suffocate. It was done repeatedly up until I urinated myself, and I hated myself a couple of times. I was unconscious, and they threw water at me a couple of times.”
Mhlongo emphasised that Cele’s utterances encouraged the police to kill their members instead of arresting them. He says he’s lucky to be still alive after enduring constant harassment from the police.
“I think that’s what has happened because there is no one who has been a suspect in the Congo’s murder, as well as Nkosi Zondi, who has been survived beside me. All of these people were killed. There’s no one who has been taken to court and stated his case. So we feel that these utterances that were made by the NBC are the ones who provoked and encouraged the members of Cato Manor not to arrest our members, but to kill them
 
www.sabcnews.com, https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/taxi-boss-tells-nkabinde-enquiry-of-arrest-and-torture-by-police/