The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the unlawful detention and mistreatment of a 15-year-old grade 9 pupil by the police.
The teenager, whose identity is being withheld, narrated distressing encounters with female police officers who transported her to the station after she failed to prove her South African citizenship.
Recalling the incident, the teenager explained that when questioned about her documentation, she informed the officer that she possessed a South African birth certificate. Despite this, she was locked up, and her pleas to contact her parents were ignored, leaving her frightened and eager to return home.
“She asked me where my documents were or what my status in the country was. I didn’t understand why she was asking me all of this. I told her that I didn’t have the documents and that I only had a South African birth certificate,” the teenager recounted, adding that they locked her up and denied her permission to call her parents.
“They wouldn’t allow me to call my parents. They ignored me. I was scared and just wanted to go home,” she said.
The teen said it took the arrival of her father, one hour later with her birth certificate, to prove that she was not an illegal foreign national. This was after she used a detainee’s phone to call her parents.
The teenager described being bundled into a police van with others and taken to Hillbrow police station, where they were segregated by gender into holding cells. She recounted an officer berating them, asserting that South Africa is solely for its citizens, disregarding her attempts to clarify her nationality.
“While they were busy putting us in groups… there was an officer shouting at us, telling us, ‘this is not your home, SA is only for South African citizens, not you’. I tried telling them that I was born in SA and raised here but no one would listen to me,” she said.
“I asked them to call my parents but again they ignored me. They put us in the cells where we found other detainees.”
“I was scared, tired, worried and anxious. I just wanted to go home. Every time I see a police van I wonder whether they will arrest me again.”
The teenager’s father said the police officers at the station could not provide any tangible reason why his daughter was locked up. However, she was released to him.
“I want someone to take responsibility for what my child went through. The manner in which they went about it was wrong. They didn’t notify me about my child being detained. She had to make a call from a cell to a family member. That is wrong, they had to contact me and not put her directly in the cells. Now she is traumatised, she’s scared of the police,” he said.
The SAHRC’s Gauteng manager, Zamantungwa Mbeki said instances of individuals being stopped to produce documentation are not uncommon, as allowed by the law.
“However, the enforcement of this provision is usually based on preconceived ideas and the oversight procedure isn’t clear. The detention of a 15-year-old, though lawful, should not be something we should be hearing about.
“Children should be protected as much as possible and their detention should be a last resort. In this case, the allegation is that the child wasn’t allowed to contact parents and other traumatic incidents, which children should not be witnessing,” she said.
Gauteng police spokesperson Lt-Col Mavela Masondo said he “was unable to comment on the matter without being given a case number to check on their system,” the Sowetan reported.
