Cops to pay up

NEARLY 13 years ago, a then six-year-old child witnessed the police torture and humiliate his father at the premises where his grandparents’ lived.

And this had emotionally scarred him to such an extent that he had now, as a young man, instituted a damages claim against the police.

Tshililo Mulimo told the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria that he will never forget what the SAPS had done to his father that day in 2012.

His father had previously instituted a claim against the police for unlawful arrest and assault. Without accepting liability, the SAPS at the time agreed to pay R350 000 in compensation to the father.

In his claim, Mulimo, now 18, testified that in October 2012, he saw the police assaulting and kicking his father and told him to get into a hole which was filled halfway with human excrement…

A police officer who worked in Makhado testified that although he was not involved and only took pictures on that day, the arrest of the father was in regard to a missing firearm.

Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi said there was also no evidence to refute the recollection of the then-six-year-old boy and ordered that the SAPS had to pay him damages, but she did not stipulate in her judgment how much.