On several occasions, trawling through the online outrage from around the world in response to the video of the taxi driver who was dragged through the streets of Daveyton on the East Rand, I came across comments to the effect that this horrifying clip, shot on a cell phone, offered irrefutable proof that a considerable portion of the South African Police Service had gone rogue and was now beyond the pale. Simply put, they were a law unto themselves.
Could this be the case, I wondered? Eight of the police officers involved in this barbaric episode have been disarmed and suspended, and the station commander at Daveyton police station - where Mozambican national Jospeh Mido Macia later died from severe head and internal injuries - removed from his position.
I've been thinking about those men and what they "allegedly" did to Macia as a punishment for parking his vehicle on the wrong side of the street. It wasn't enough that they dragged him behind a speeding van for 500m to the police station, but there he was systematically beaten with fists, boots, truncheons and torches, according to prisoners being held in the station's holding cells, in a sustained assault that lasted almost two hours.
Now, two hours is a long time. It takes considerable determination and stamina to maintain such brute savagery. But Macia's assailants eventually tired and stopped, and he then lay dying, according to The Times, "in a crumpled heap, in his own blood and faeces."
It took him almost four hours to die; during that time no-one thought to give him any medical attention. Not a single person in that entire police station raised a finger to help him at any time during his ordeal.
A police source later told the newspaper of the nature of Macia's injuries: "It was so bad his organs burst . . . there was basically nothing left of his insides. His head injuries were as bad . . . his skull was crushed . . . his brain badly damaged. It is clear that those who did this wanted to kill him."