Thousands turn out for funerals of cops killed in #NgcoboPoliceStation shootout
Constable Kuhle Mathetha had graduated just over a month before he and four policemen died in a hail of bullets in their Ngcobo police station from gunmen on February 21.
Mathetha, 27, who graduated in December, was the youngest of the five slain officers.
He, three other officers and a soldier were buried in Cofimvaba, Ngcobo and Mthatha over the weekend.
About 2000 people attended Mathetha’s funeral at his Ncorha village in Cofimvaba on Saturday.
National deputy commissioner for detective crime Lieutenant-General Jacob Tsumane said to the mourners: “Police service pistols are not toys to decorate the members. They are weapons to be used when the situation demands it.
“If you start a war you must stand in for it. When you attack a police officer, you attack the state. Police have tools of the trade and those tools should be used.
“We shall use the tools of trade to destroy gangs, syndicates and criminals masquerading as angels, prophets and instruments of God. Instruments of God or angels bring only peace and will never spill blood,” he said.
General Tsumane said a memorial to the fallen heroes would be erected at Ngcobo police station.
“They did not die in vain. They fought a gallant fight, they died in trenches protecting South Africans and we are proud of them,” he said.
Mathetha’s grieving father, Bulelani Mathetha, who is a retired school principal, said he had accepted the fact that his son was gone forever but would remain in his memory as a handsome, disciplined, diligent and humble young man.
He said his heart went out to the parents of those arrested and killed during the shootout with police and the church raid hours later.
“Like me, they have lost a child, not a policeman or a criminal. The parents did not send their children to commit the crime. Now the parents have the task of burying the children who died in this manner.
“It will haunt those parents for the rest of their lives, that their sons killed policemen. Now that I have accepted the death of my son, my heart goes out to those parents. No parent ever bore and raised a criminal or killer, but bore a child. I should not blame parents for the sins of their sons,” said Mathetha.
Three of the dead gunmen were the Mancoba brothers, known as the “seven angels” leading the Seven Angels Ministries operating at Nyanga village in Ngcobo. Police raided the church compound shooting seven people, including a disabled ex-school teacher, on February 23.
Earlier during the funeral, Popcru provincial deputy secretary Xolani Prusenti painted a bleak picture of the police service.
“Our police stations are not guarded and are exposed to attacks at any time. Police officers are underpaid.”
He urged SAPS management to prevent a recurrence of the Ngcobo bloodbath.
General Tshume said: “Already we have taken a decision to have a police safety summit to review the current strategy.”
lProvincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Liziwe Ntshinga said that the church would be closed and on March 17 and 18 there would be a big cleansing ceremony and the writing on the mountain would be erased. — lulamilef@dispatch.co.za