DAVEYTON — Friends, family and supporters of a Mozambican man who died in custody after being dragged behind a South African police van held a memorial service for him yesterday.
Global Post
Around 1 000 mourners gathered at the sports stadium in Daveyton, the town east of Johannesburg, where 27-year-old Mido Macia died on Tuesday last week.
The noisy remembrance was tinged with anger, the singing intermixed with shouts, while the crowd — a mix of Mozambicans, South Africans and other immigrants — angrily booed police representatives out of the stadium.
Footage showed the Mozambican taxi driver being manhandled, handcuffed to the back of a police van and dragged hundreds of metres to a local police station.
Just over two hours later he was found dead in his cell. A post-mortem found he died from head injuries and internal bleeding. The bail hearing for the eight police officers charged with his murder will start tomorrow.
Mourners at the memorial sang and held posters of Macia, while several people carried a woman by her arms and legs, imitating the now infamous images of his abuse.
One man held a poster with the words “Police stop promoting xenophobia. Justice must take its course”.
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At one point the crowd broke out singing Umshini wami (Bring me my machine gun), a Zulu struggle song known to many Mozambicans who have lived as migrant workers in South Africa.
“I’m here because they took away my brother,” said Mandla Ncube, a 29-year-old immigrant from neighbouring Zimbabwe.
“Police tell themselves they’ve got power,” he said. “They treat us badly,” he added, bemoaning violence against foreigners in Africa’s largest economy.
The crowd echoed his feeling, loudly cheering a local schoolgirl who slammed police violence in a poem.
“This isn’t the first time they killed,” she said.
Several members of Macia’s family and friends who had travelled from Mozambique sat with officials on the pitch of the football field. His father, Jossefa, was expected later.
