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Bushbuckridge thugs at large

FUGITIVE: Douglas Mokgakane
FUGITIVE: Douglas Mokgakane

MEMBERS of the community in the Bushbuckridge area are up in arms against the provincial police for failing to arrest a group of three men who are allegedly terrorising them with murder, gang rape, hijacking, unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition as well as armed robbery.

So angry were the communities that they marched to the Acornhoek police station in their hundreds on Friday to hand over a memorandum to Mpumalanga MEC Vusi Shongwe calling for the immediate arrest of the group.

The community and police believe that fugitive Douglas Mokgakane is one of the three men who recently gang-raped a businesswoman and her daughter in their house in Green Valley near Acornhoek after tying up the family's security guard and forcing him at gunpoint to pretend to need assistance by knocking at the door of his employees.

The unsuspecting family opened the door, believing that their security guard needed some urgent assistance, only to be forced back into the house by the armed criminals who took turns raping both daughter and mother before robbing them and then looting the house at gunpoint.

The robbers escaped in the family's white Toyota Fortuner, which was later found abandoned at Thulamahashe Township about 30km from the crime scene later that night.

Police said Mokgakane escaped from the Skukuza police station together with three others in the early morning hours of November 6 last year.

Two of his accomplices were re-arrested on December 2 after a tip-off from the community.

People in Bushbuckridge lock themselves in their houses early nowadays after a string of attacks in which people have either been killed, robbed, raped or severely assaulted by a group off three men whom police have confirmed to be members of the same group because their modus operandi has been similar in nearly all the attacks.

A community leader, who asked not to be identified for fear of becoming the next victim, told Shongwe during the march on Friday that certain police officials at the local station were collaborating with the criminals because they were always a step ahead of the police.

"When we call the police to give them a tip-off about the whereabouts of the criminals they always know that the police are on the way and leave quickly. Someone at the police station is alerting them."

After Shongwe received the memorandum he promised the community that he would make sure that the arrest was made before too much damage was done and that investigations into the allegations against the police would be conducted.

Shongwe was hands-on in the circumstances that led to the arrest of four men accused of murdering Ehlanzeni chief whip Johan Ndlovu last year.

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