In early July 2023, South Africans were left in shock when the video of eight members of the VIP Protection Unit assigned to the deputy president, Paul Mashatile, went viral.
In this video, the men can be seen viciously assaulting two people and threatening them with firearms.
It would later emerge, as the story unfolded, that the motorists who were so cruelly beaten up were forcefully stopped by Mashatile’s bodyguards on Johannesburg’s busy N1 highway for not changing lanes timeously to allow for the deputy president’s convoy to pass through.
In SA, all road users are legally obligated to give immediate and absolute right of way to vehicles displaying blue lights and/or sounding sirens, as specified in the National Road Traffic Act and related regulations.
This obligation applies to emergency vehicles, traffic officers, and other authorised personnel using these signals.
While emergency vehicles have the right of way, they are also required to drive with due regard for the safety of other traffic — something VIP Protection Units drivers rarely do, as many motorists in Gauteng will testify.
One of the motorists was assaulted to a point of unconsciousness, and the post-incident photos that went viral show the other motorist bleeding from the head. It was a gut-wrenching sight.
The officers were immediately suspended after the incident, on the recommendation of the commander of the Presidential Protection Unit, Major General Wally Rhoode, and were later subjected to a disciplinary hearing.
The hearing, which began in the same month of the incident, would take a long time to conclude due to several factors.
These included the general election in May 2024, as well as the change of legal representatives by the eight men.
They had initially been represented by two senior police officers, whom they would later accuse of misleading them.
Following this, they got representation from the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) but the union later withdrew.
They then retained representation from the SA Police Union (Sapu), which managed to not only have their suspensions lifted in January 2025.
To the shock of all South Africans, it is now being reported that all eight men have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
For many of us, this ruling makes absolutely no sense because there is no question that what the VIP protectors subjected the motorists to is the very definition of police brutality.
Even more senseless is that the basis for this outrageous ruling is that the video was deemed inadmissible by those presiding over the disciplinary hearing.
This is despite the fact that a court of law had already ruled on this matter, deeming the video admissible as evidence.
In giving reasons for the verdict, the chairperson of the disciplinary committee, Brigadier Thulani Shabalala, also argued that there was uncertainty about who the original complainant was.
Additionally, the planned testimony of a neutral eyewitness also curiously fell through.
While the eight men are still facing charges of assault, reckless or negligent driving, unlawful pointing of a firearm and malicious damage to property in the Randburg magistrate’s court, there is no question that the outcome of the internal disciplinary hearing has delivered a heavy blow to the credibility of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), which has a long history of protecting rogue officers and of not holding officers in conflict with the law accountable for their actions.
But more than this, for many South Africans, this outcome affirms the cemented belief that the entire criminal justice system is broken, because while it was an internal disciplinary hearing, it reads like a script from many other high-level cases where clear evidence exists, but perpetrators are acquitted.
The country is still reeling from the acquittal of Nigerian pastor Timothy Omotoso, who was found not guilty on all charges pertaining to his sexual abuse of congregants, a number of whom came out to give powerful testimony.
Crime is already a terrifying reality for all South Africans. When you couple this with the impunity with which criminals are treated, it becomes even more debilitating.
Acquittal of Mashatile’s VIP officers points to broken criminal justice system
Columnist
Image: Twitter Screenshot
In early July 2023, South Africans were left in shock when the video of eight members of the VIP Protection Unit assigned to the deputy president, Paul Mashatile, went viral.
In this video, the men can be seen viciously assaulting two people and threatening them with firearms.
It would later emerge, as the story unfolded, that the motorists who were so cruelly beaten up were forcefully stopped by Mashatile’s bodyguards on Johannesburg’s busy N1 highway for not changing lanes timeously to allow for the deputy president’s convoy to pass through.
In SA, all road users are legally obligated to give immediate and absolute right of way to vehicles displaying blue lights and/or sounding sirens, as specified in the National Road Traffic Act and related regulations.
This obligation applies to emergency vehicles, traffic officers, and other authorised personnel using these signals.
While emergency vehicles have the right of way, they are also required to drive with due regard for the safety of other traffic — something VIP Protection Units drivers rarely do, as many motorists in Gauteng will testify.
One of the motorists was assaulted to a point of unconsciousness, and the post-incident photos that went viral show the other motorist bleeding from the head. It was a gut-wrenching sight.
The officers were immediately suspended after the incident, on the recommendation of the commander of the Presidential Protection Unit, Major General Wally Rhoode, and were later subjected to a disciplinary hearing.
The hearing, which began in the same month of the incident, would take a long time to conclude due to several factors.
These included the general election in May 2024, as well as the change of legal representatives by the eight men.
They had initially been represented by two senior police officers, whom they would later accuse of misleading them.
Following this, they got representation from the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) but the union later withdrew.
They then retained representation from the SA Police Union (Sapu), which managed to not only have their suspensions lifted in January 2025.
To the shock of all South Africans, it is now being reported that all eight men have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
For many of us, this ruling makes absolutely no sense because there is no question that what the VIP protectors subjected the motorists to is the very definition of police brutality.
Even more senseless is that the basis for this outrageous ruling is that the video was deemed inadmissible by those presiding over the disciplinary hearing.
This is despite the fact that a court of law had already ruled on this matter, deeming the video admissible as evidence.
In giving reasons for the verdict, the chairperson of the disciplinary committee, Brigadier Thulani Shabalala, also argued that there was uncertainty about who the original complainant was.
Additionally, the planned testimony of a neutral eyewitness also curiously fell through.
While the eight men are still facing charges of assault, reckless or negligent driving, unlawful pointing of a firearm and malicious damage to property in the Randburg magistrate’s court, there is no question that the outcome of the internal disciplinary hearing has delivered a heavy blow to the credibility of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), which has a long history of protecting rogue officers and of not holding officers in conflict with the law accountable for their actions.
But more than this, for many South Africans, this outcome affirms the cemented belief that the entire criminal justice system is broken, because while it was an internal disciplinary hearing, it reads like a script from many other high-level cases where clear evidence exists, but perpetrators are acquitted.
The country is still reeling from the acquittal of Nigerian pastor Timothy Omotoso, who was found not guilty on all charges pertaining to his sexual abuse of congregants, a number of whom came out to give powerful testimony.
Crime is already a terrifying reality for all South Africans. When you couple this with the impunity with which criminals are treated, it becomes even more debilitating.
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