Press Statement dated 19 June 2018
The widow of murdered train driver Mr Piet Botha told his two young gang murderers to ask God to forgive them and rectify their lives irrespective of how long they might be sent to jail today.
“My child, I wish I could let you experience the pain and suffering you caused for me and my children. They did not have a father to celebrate Father’s Day with this past Sunday. One day my daughter won’t have a father to walk her down the aisle. Nobody can bring him back,” Botha testified in the Western Cape High Court.
She responded after his two convicted murderers, Jatheme Hamid and Dorian Diedericks, informed her through their irrespective advocates how sorry they were for what they had done after Botha testified that they showed no remorse throughout the trail.
The men were minores when they and Cedric Andrews shot and killed Botha, a member of the United National Transport Union, in broad daylight on the 11th July 2016 while he was waiting for a train on the platform of the Netreg-station on the notorious Central Line in the Western Cape.
His wife pleaded with the Court not to over emphasize the fact that two of them were minors, but rather remove them from society for a long time to protect other families against them.
Capt. Len Fribus, Commander of the Crime, Information, Management, Office (CIMO) of the Rapid Rail-police unit, testified that the Central Line consisted out of 21 train stations with only 89 operational police officials available to police the whole of the railway lines in the Western Cape, including the trains of Metrorail, Shosoloza Meyl and Transnet.
Due to the overcrowding of the trains, no police official is present on the train during peak-times as they cannot stand more than 30 cm from commuters. Police Officials only commence with policing on train after 09:00 in the morning when it is no longer peak. The Western Cape have between 500 000 to 700 000 commuters utilizing the trains per day, she testified.
“We should be more than 1 000 police officials, but we are not,” says Fribus.
According to her there was a 300% increase in rail related murders in the Western Cape because the railway line is being used as a “dumping area” for the bodies of victims that were murdered elsewhere.
“The modus operandi is to place bodies on the tracks in the early hours of the morning to that the first trains can dispose of the evidence.”
On the Central Line there has been a reduction in these incidents of 32% this financial year thanks to the joint patrols of police officials and protection officers of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa,” Fribus testified.
According to her the rape statistics and the sexual assault statistics have doubled in the rail area because of the bushes surrounding it and the overcrowding of trains making women easy targets.
“There is no way for us (the police) to prevent women being touched on an overcrowded train,” she testified.
Another problem is that it has become “target practise” in these communities to threw stones at the trains. As a result, lots of commuters have laid charges of assault at the police after they had been hit by a stone while commuting.
Fribus could not provide the Court with specific statistics as to attacks on train drivers or employees of Prasa.
According to her the crime spree on the Central Line was minimal while the route was closed for six weeks earlier this year after the murder on an armed security guard. “If there are no commuters, there is no demand for criminals to come there,” she said.
Steve Harris, General Secretary of UNTU, says the reality painted today in Court is even worse than the facts that the Union presented in its affidavits to the same court when it brought a pending applications about the safety of its members working there.
UNTU wants the court to make an example of Botha’s murderers in showing criminals that senseless crimes like these on innocent workers will not be tolerated. The Union earlier asked for life imprisonment to be imposed on the accused.
UNTU trade union representatives and UNTU Organisers supported the Botha-family today at the hearing. The men will be sentenced tomorrow.
Issued on behalf of United National Transport Union (UNTU) by Sonja Carstens, Media and Liaison Officer