Public order police should fire rubber bullets to the ground more than 20m away from their intended target and it should ricochet into the legs and not the upper body.

This is the testimony that the Johannesburg high court heard on Thursday from Col Jacob Beeslaar during the trial of the four officers accused of shooting and killing Mthokozisi Ntumba on March 10 last year. According to the state, Ntumba was shot in the chest. 

Beeslaar, who is from the public order policing unit in Diepkloof and has been a police officer for 38 years, told the court about what their regulations say about how police should use rubber bullets as a form of crowd control.

Ntumba was shot and killed during a student protest in Braamfontein.

On the day of the shooting, Ntumba, 35, was coming out of his doctor's appointment at MyClinic Health Care on De Beer street in Braamfontein.

“Rubber rounds are classified as minimal force. The reason they should be skip-fired and bounce on the ground, targeting the legs of the people is because this will reduce the possibilities of serious injury. The chances of fatal shooting is less when a person is hit on the legs than the upper body,” said Beeslaar.

Beeslaar did hasten to add that rubber bullets, an offensive measure during crowd control, should only be used if the participants in a protest action refuse to obey a warning from the police to disperse. The order has to come from the commander in charge of the operation.

“The warning comes before offensive action is taken. A warning should be given two times in English and a language commonly spoken in the area [of the protest action] to the participants for them to disperse and give them reasonable time to disperse. An offensive action should be taken when a commander gives an instruction and no individual action should be taken by the police officers,” said Beeslaar.

During cross-examination, Beeslaar said he cannot say whether the accused were operating under command or acted individually.

Earlier on Thursday Beeslaar also testified how CCTV footage he had seen showed the police officers involved getting out of a Nyala and randomly shooting at people who were standing on the pavement on the day Ntumba was killed. 

Beeslaar told the court that he heard about the shooting when he was driving to the Johannesburg CBD.

“It was around 11.30am and I heard on the police radio that a person was shot during a protest action. When I arrived I went to Stiemens Street where I met with some of my provincial heads. I was informed by them that a person was killed on De Beer Street,” said Beeslaar.

Beeslaar said he viewed the footage of the shooting incident with other commanders from the public order policing unit. 

“I saw there was a police Nyala that arrived on the scene. At the scene there were members of the public standing by the pavement area. The Nyala vehicle stopped at the right-hand lane closest to the members of the public on the pavement area.

“The police got out of the vehicle and shot at the people standing by the pavement using shotguns. I observed that one person was holding his chest as if he was shot.

“After that I saw members jump back into the vehicle [Nyala] and the Nyala drove off. I only recognised Warrant Officer Mohammed [Victor] on the footage. I could not see the others very well,” said Beeslaar.