By Staff Reporter
SOUTH AFRICA – Friends and relatives of a 31-year-old Zimbabwean, Tatenda Tembo, who died inside Wynberg Police Station in Cape Town have raised concerns that what police claim to have been a suicide might have actually been murder.
“We are still not sure why he was arrested. All we know is they took him from his house (03 July) at 7am. He was only at the police station for 10 hours. Friends went to see him at 5 pm and he was laughing and joking. By 5.30pm he was dead,” a source told Nehanda Radio from South Africa.
“Tatenda was extremely hard working, had a taxi business and was building a house back home. This guy had such a bright future and he would never kill himself. He was successful and a role model in our community.
“The police are saying he was in solitary confinement for protection and that he hung himself using a belt. Don’t they remove belts and shoelaces when they put people in cells? The window from which he allegedly hung himself was the same height as him,” our source said.
“Last time the police beat a Nigerian man in our complex and he died in custody. I could hear his screams in my flat and they tortured him. Tatenda had just seen his lawyers who had assured him that he would be released. For the police to claim he killed himself inside their cells is just not adding up.
“They ruined the future of an innocent young man and his mothers hopes and dreams are all crushed. She will never see her son, all because someone wanted to prove the point that Tatenda did not matter. Well he did matter, and he does still matter. Please we need answers to all these questions,” the source added.
Nehanda Radio sought comment from Wynberg Police Station in Cape Town. We were however told to put our questions via email to the South African Police Service. We had received no response by the time we ran this story.
Cape Town has a very bad record of police brutality.
In March this year a video was uploaded to Facebook and You Tube showing a man being arrested by police and security guards. The police are filmed stripping naked the suspected foreigner and assaulting him in the street in full view of members of the public.
Police Brutality in Kensington, Cape Town, South Africa
