‘You are not a law unto yourselves’
Prithiraj Dullay has pleaded for no stone to be left unturned in the investigation into the death of Leanne Douglas.
HUMAN rights activist and writer Prithiraj Dullay has spoken out about the death of South Coast restaurant owner Leanne Douglas who was found dead in her overturned, bullet-riddled vehicle on the N2 highway near Umkomaas on Sunday, September 15.
“There is a quiet rage that is simmering deep inside me. Now it is reaching proportions that make it difficult to control. There are so many disturbing thoughts that fill my mind as I ponder the terrifying pursuit and death of Ms Douglas, as well as the terror visited upon Simphiwe Bulala, her infant children, and a nephew,” he said.
Ms Bulala was also returning from Port Shepstone to her Newlands West home on June 24 when, for as yet unknown reasons, she was shot at by police as she stopped her car.
“How did it come to pass that a Port Shepstone resident, driving a low powered car, was pursued for over 60km by an unmarked Port Shepstone police vehicle, later joined by two other marked police cars, and then shot off the road, resulting in the rolling over of her Chevy Spark and the death of the young woman driver?”
“I think about the total helplessness of Ms Douglas’s mother, Leonie Luckin, as she hears the desperate pleas of her child and listens as her child dies,” he said. He explained that he was ‘there’ several times. “The difference is that I survived, more by luck than my own doing. As I read the story of her pursuit, a flashback flooded my memory. The common factor in both was the ‘boot’,” he pointed out.
Mr Dullay was detained in Port Shepstone in 1977, a month after Steve Biko’s murder. A captain of the then notorious security police told him in chilling, measured tones that ‘if they had to don Nazi jackboots, they would not hesitate to crush me into the ground’.
“I will never forget the iciness in his eyes as he made his pronouncement. To him I was not human; just an enemy. I was the ‘other’! Fast forward to September 2013 as Ms Douglas is flung from her somersaulting car. As she lay dying, she grabbed hold of a policeman’s boot to plead for help. In minutes a young woman’s life was snuffed out. Why?,” he questioned.
He explained that in apartheid’s heyday, this abuse of human rights was the order of the day. “I vividly remember such intimidating pursuits before and after I fled into exile in 1978. I remember my own pursuit and the pursuit of the Uitenhage Pebco three, who were lured to their horrific deaths in Port Elizabeth,” he said.
“I remember the attempted assassinations of peace monitors in Port Shepstone and I remember the terror of beatings and sudden detentions. I remember thousands of murders at the hands of the so-called ‘Third Force’, mainly policemen and paramilitary units, as well as their proxy forces. I remember the great pain of exile, dislocation, pursuit, harassment, torture and death, and the very high price we paid for the establishment of a constitutional democracy in a ravaged South Africa on the brink of a civil war,” he recalled.
“Have we forgotten so soon? I was present at, and recall, Nelson Mandela’s statement from his 1994 inauguration in Pretoria: “Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another… Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement.”
“So tell me SAPS in Port Shepstone, Umkomas and Newlands East, what is happening?,” he asked.
Mr Dullay said that according to reports in the media, nothing seems to gel, as Ms Douglas was no terrorist or criminal; neither was Ms Bulala.
“Then why were both terrorised. Ms Douglas was terrorised into a situation that took her life. There are thousands like me who gave their everything to secure a functioning democracy and for us, you are all our children, including Ms Douglas and Ms Bulala. That they were white, blue, black or green is totally irrelevant. Neither was a lesser South African.”
Ms Dullay pleaded with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) to leave not even a pebble unturned in getting to the bottom of both cases. “If rotten elements in the police were involved in any way, then heads must roll,” he said.
“You are not a law unto yourselves. You are there to uphold the democracy that so many of my generation gave their all to achieve. This is sacred and must be defended at all costs. Be assured that we are many who will not let these cases rest. The truth must out.”
*Prithiraj Dullay is an academic, author, columnist and a human rights activist, formerly from Port Shepstone.
