ALI MPHAKI
IN HIS quest to make his township safe, an elderly Kliptown man who patrols the streets every evening and morning was shot in a foot by a balaclava-clad man.
Osborne Matshikiza, 76, was on his way to collect a fellow patroller at around 4am on Tuesday when he came face-to-face with the gunman in a notorious section of Kliptown called Angola, which is adjacent the local police station.
“Without saying anything and without provocation, he fired a single bullet which hit me on my left ankle. I suspect the man knows me, which is why he was wearing a balaclava,” said Matshikiza from his bed at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital.
The shooting has shocked the 20 volunteers who patrol the Kliptown area, who complain they don’t have the firepower to shoot back at criminals.
Matshikiza considers himself lucky to be alive and doubts he will continue to patrol the streets once he recovers.
“It would seem these trigger-happy thugs do not care whether you are a senior citizen. What is our country coming to?” Matshikiza asked.
He said the high levels of crime in Kliptown had forced him to join the patrollers.
“I was taught you are either part of the problem or the solution, and I chose the latter. There is no way I could simply fold my arms and not throw my weight behind efforts by other members of the community to help make our area crime free. But look at where I am now,” he said, pointing to his injured leg.
Community leader Sipho Jantjies decried the high crime rate and said there were too many guns in wrong hands in Kliptown. The situation was so severe that some residents feared to venture out at night.
Police statistics show an increase of cases involving illegal firearms and ammunition in the area. In the period April 2010 to March there were 79 cases, compared with 42 in April 2009 to March 2010.
Kliptown police spokeswoman Captain Nondumiso Mpantsha said police were investigating but had not made any arrests.