When the alleged leader of the notorious Razor Gang escaped from court in September, Inspector Bruce Macintosh made a promise to Bronwyn Paterson.
No matter how long it would take, he would hunt down Raymond Zulu for the brutal attack her family suffered in October 2007.
Yesterday, Macintosh called Bronwyn while still deep inside extension 2 of Diepsloot township. Next to him, in the rubble of a half-broken shack, was a man in handcuffs. The man dubbed "Razor".
According to police sources, Macintosh began receiving information about Zulu's movements last Friday. He spent each night of the weekend in the township, north of Johannesburg, meeting with as many as five informers monitoring the area.
At the time of their escape, Zulu and his gang were called "sewer rats" by police officers because they had low profiles in the townships and were extremely difficult to track down.
But the crimes they allegedly committed were heinous. The five-member gang are accused of an attack at the home of Bronwyn and her husband, former Wits University professor Alan Paterson.
Their daughter Jamie, who was 17 at the time, was raped on the eve of her final exams. Bronwyn was stabbed with a pair of scissors. The robbers broke three of her ribs, smashed her nose and tore off a piece of her ear.
On September 10, Zulu and eight other prisoners managed to break out of the Alexandra Magistrate's Court, attacking court orderlies and taking advantage of the run-down building. Among them was Sibusiso Mashinini - also an alleged member of the Razor Gang - and two violent robbers who pulled off a heist at a Sandton jewellery store. Five of the men were rearrested, but Zulu and Mashinini were on the run. Mashinini is yet to be captured.
Yesterday, Macintosh - of the Trio Task Team, Alexandra police cluster - and five fellow officers arrived in Diepsloot and were led by the informers to the shack where Zulu was hiding. The chain and lock were on the outside of the door, an apparent attempt to fool people into believing no one was home.
When Zulu refused to open up, Macintosh kicked down the door, causing parts of the shack to come crashing down.
Sources say Zulu was so shocked, all he could say was: "Mr Macintosh, you've got me."
Zulu was taken to the Sandton police station holding cells and is due to appear in court on Monday.
The Patersons were overjoyed at yesterday's arrest.
"He (Macintosh) said to me: 'I won't rest until I find him. I'll get him one day'," Bronwyn told The Star. "He is an unsung angel who has been quietly putting his life at risk for the sake of others. He should be commended."
She added that the news came as a complete surprise.
"We are cheered by the thought that there are ordinary policemen out there doing magnificent work, and we thank them," Alan said.
"My family would now urge the authorities to ensure that these and other gangs will no longer slip through the system."
After the robbery, Alan moved to England to set up a new home for his family. But he decided to return to South Africa, and is due back next month.
When Zulu and Mashinini escaped, Alan wrote a letter to President Jacob Zuma, but has not received a response.
Zulu was found with an unlicensed firearm and will face fresh charges for that and for his escape.
He has been linked to several other cases of violent house robberies and a murder, police spokesman Inspector Lee Ramdiyal said.
The Razor Gang face two separate trials at the Alexandra Magistrate's Court, and police will investigate whether Zulu committed any new crimes while on the run.
By Alex eliseev
The Star 13/11/09
See story below - Published:Dec 09, 2007
‘I saw the worst of humanity’
Seventeen-year-old Jamie Paterson, was asleep when five “psychopathic sadists” invaded her family’s Johannesburg home.
She was dragged out of bed. As four of them terrorised her mother, father and nine-year-old brother, the fifth pulled her into a bathroom and raped her. Then he told her matter- of-factly that he was HIV-positive.
Their assailants were all in their teens or early 20s . Five of them stormed the house at 10.20pm on October 2. A sixth waited outside in a getaway car.
They tied the family up and then, for an hour and a half, they terrorised them.
“The robbers were full of bravado,” Jamie’s father — Alan Paterson, professor of anatomical pathology at Wits University — recalled this week. “They enjoyed every bit of the attack. It was brutal.”
Throughout, Jamie was convinced the men were going to kill them.
“I feel so much anger and hatred,” she said. “An indescribable fury for what they did to us and how cruelly they treated us, as if we were not human.
“And how they damaged us all for the future.”
Jamie — a prefect at Roedean High School — was separated and led away by one of the thugs.
When he had finished, the rapist locked the bathroom door, telling Jamie he was doing so to “protect” her from his cohorts who would almost certainly also rape and then kill her.
Meanwhile, the men threw a duvet over Alan Paterson’s head, and beat his wife Bronwyn, a former Pact ballet dancer, into a near coma.
Paterson could only listen to her screams as the robbers pistol- whipped her and then stabbed her in the back of the head and neck with a pair of scissors.
“All the time they kept shouting at her: ‘You f***ing white bitch.’ ”
The thugs broke three of her ribs, smashed her nose and tore off a part of her ear.
“The violence against my wife and daughter was incredibly cruel.”
The robbers fled with the family’s two cars, jewellery, medals, cameras, television sets, a DVD player, speakers and a microwave.
“Everybody is incredibly traumatised,” Paterson said. “The emotional wounds will take a long time to heal.”
For four weeks, Jamie was on a cocktail of anti-retroviral pills . Two days after she finished the course, she wrote the rest of her matric exams.
Click here to read - Jamie’s story
Also see full story on Carte Blanche -
http://www.mnet.co.za/Mnet/Shows/carteblanche/story.asp?Id=3456
Among the most shocking house robberies reported in 2007:
# An attack in Mpumalanga last Sunday in which robbers cut off four of 70-year-old Hettie Janse van Rensburg’s fingers with pruning scissors;
# An attack in September in Craighall Park, Johannesburg, by a trio of robbers in which the homeowner, Mike Thompson, was stabbed 14 times, shot in the chest and in the back of the head before being dumped in his swimming pool;# An attack in April, in which two- year-old toddler Tsahai Okiekwe was shot in the head and killed. The gang of four murdered her because she started crying;
# Another attack in April in which 68-year-old Sandy Staats was tortured and so badly burnt with boiling water that she died in hospital a week later;
House robberies occur predominantly in Gauteng and KwaZulu- Natal.
Gauteng accounted for nearly half of all house robberies committed between April and September this year: 3568 out of a country-wide total of 6 711. Just over a quarter of house robberies — 1648 in total— happened in KwaZulu-Natal .
Each of the other provinces reported fewer than 400 house robberies during the six month period with the Free State recording 75 and the Northern Cape just three.
Source:The Times
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=653900
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