Mistaken identity leads to R100,000 damages award against police

A judge, in ordering the police to pay R100,000 in damages to a man in a case of mistaken identity relating to a taxi killing, described the SAPS’s conduct towards the 22-year-old as being  “reprehensible” as they were set on intimidating and humiliating him.

Banoyolo Magxala turned to the Eastern Cape High Court, sitting in Mthatha, where he claimed R500,000 in damages against the Minister of Police for unlawful arrest and detention. The police did not defend their actions.

Magxala, a now former taxi driver, was detained overnight in a police cell on charges of murder, attempted murder and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He was set free the next day after the police realised they had the wrong person.

Magxala testified that on the day of the incident, while in Rustenburg, he received a phone call from a police officer who told him to report to a police station in Mthatha. When he arrived there, there were four other people there as well. According to him a police officer exclaimed that “they were the persons they were looking for in connection with the killings during the taxi feud”. 

He denied involvement in the killings, stating that he was in Rustenburg at the time the incident took place. He was handcuffed and, together with his counterparts, he was “marched” by the police out of the police building to a waiting car. 

As they exited, he spotted a group of members of the rival taxi association. In full view of the public and the rival taxi group, the police shouted “here are the killers of the people who died in Ntlaza”.

They were then taken to another police station where they were detained in one cell. Magxala explained that the cell was dirty, it had a toilet which did not flush and there was no privacy when using it. 

The five of them were made to sleep on mattresses and blankets which were dirty and looked soiled. He opted to wrap himself in the blanket on the cement floor.  

In the early hours of the morning SAPS officers called his name, and he was taken out of the cell. He was told that they were going with him to the Mthatha dam where they would beat him up until he told them the truth regarding his involvement in the taxi violence.

Instead of taking the route to the dam, they drove towards town, where he was simply told to go home. When he was dropped off in the early hours of the morning, he feared the rival taxi association who lived in Mthatha might spot him and kill him. 

Magxala said his arrest tarnished his reputation in that he was labelled as a killer. He lost his job, when the taxi he was driving before he was arrested was taken away from him. His family lost his financial support as a result.

Judge Lindiwe Rusi noted that this was his first encounter with the law. He was being labelled as “a killer” with no regard to the incendiary nature of such public utterances in a potentially volatile situation.

“The police were on a witch-hunt, they had no reasonable suspicion that the plaintiff was guilty of the offences they sought to arrest him for…To add insult to injury, they dumped him on the streets as though they were discarding an object devoid of value,” the judge said.

zelda.venter@inl.co.za