Worst Nightmare – Crime in South Africa

Original Post Date: 2001-08-28 Time: 06:04:38  Posted By: Jan

17/06/2001 – Carte Blanche Les Aupiais

Dean and Tunisia Blom are a loving, average South African family. But just
more than two weeks ago, their life was destroyed. The Bloms survived a
brutal attack by a group of robbers on their Germiston home, only to be
confronted by a seemingly never-ending stream of bureaucratic incompetence.

The evening of May 30th was like any other. Their two dogs sleep inside the
house and Tunisia lets them out for a while at night. That night the dogs
followed her back inside – and for a few seconds the front door was left
open… enough time for two robbers to gain entry.

Dean was watching television in their bedroom when he noticed someone
standing at his bedroom door, who ordered him to hold the dogs back. His son
Dominic was busy elsewhere in the house. Tunisia was pulled out of the
toilet.

It was the beginning of a three-hour nightmare. “You can't believe it's
happening to you,” says Tunisia, ”I just knew that we must stay calm”.

By then the robbers had found Dean's gun: “They covered me with a duvet and
stood over me with a gun all the time. I don't remember much from then.”

Dean and Tunisia's story is not unique. Seven years into the new South Africa
and crime has become a recurring nightmare that the nation experiences as a
whole. The man who is ultimately responsible for our safety is Minister Steve
Tshwete, who says he is shocked by the depths that crime has reached in our
society.

The robbers asked Tunisia and Dean where the money and the safe were. They
then asked where the cellphones were. Then one of the robbers took the Bloms'
car to a nearby Autobank. He failed to draw money and returned for Tunisia.
Tunisia was brought to an ATM less than 900 metres from her house, and forced
to draw the maximum amount from her bankcard.

But the worst was still to come. After they returned to the house, one of the
robbers took Tunisia to the living room.

“He took the gun and lifted up my nightie. At that stage I knew what he was
going to do … I knew then that he meant business. It was no good to fight him
… he just raped me. He did what he wanted to do. And I was helpless, I
couldn't do anything,” she says.

Gauteng psychiatrist Dr Ike Nzo says criminals are going to cost the country
more than apartheid ever did. Last Sunday, his letter about the effects that
crime has on the entire nation was published in the Sunday Times. But what
made the country sit up and take notice was the fact that Ike Nzo is the only
son of one of the leading lights of the struggle against apartheid. His late
father, Dr Alfred Nzo, was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Mandela
cabinet.

Last year Dr Nzo kept a record of the patients he'd seen in two months with
crime-related psychiatric problems. He was shocked by the numbers.

Tunisia only told Dean about her personal ordeal after the robbers had gone.
What went through his mind when she told him? “It's a form of devastation.
It's a form of helplessness,” he says.

The robbers made off with a car and R80 000 worth of household goods. The
telephone lines were cut and Dean desperately called on a neighbour for help.

“I understand people don't want to get involved in this, but he looked at me
and said, ‘I'll phone the cops' and he closed the window. I screamed again,
and I said, ‘Please, lend me your cellphone – I want to phone somebody'. The
guy refused to come out,” says Dean.

When the police finally arrived, Tunisia was rushed to a local clinic. No
policewoman was available, so she was asked if a policeman could be present
during her examination. The Bloms also claim that the police never traced
their cellphone, never took their fingerprints, and never circulated their
car as stolen.

They also say the docket went missing for five days- something that's denied
by Area Commissioner for the East Rand, Gert de Lange who says that he had
read through it just the day before.

Steve Tshwete admits that there is a problem in the police service.

“You have officers who have absolutely no respect for members of the public,
who have no sense of duty, of responsibility, who do not seem to understand
that they are there to serve that community,” says Tshwete.

Dean feels that South Africa's police system has failed his family.

”This system has allowed these guys to put a death sentence on Tunisia's
head. This system doesn't care. This system has failed us all,” he says.

———————

Suspects in Blom Robbery Arrested – 07/20/01

Two suspects appeared in court on multiple robbery and rape charges. They
were arrested following the Carte Blanche programme in June about the
nightmare of crime in South Africa.

Carte Blanche introduced viewers to Dean and Theunisia Blom, an ordinary
family whose lives were destroyed when intruders held them at gunpoint in
their Germiston home. Theunisia was raped, and they were robbed of their
valuables.

Initially, the Bloms were outraged at what they perceived to be a lack of
police interest in the case. In an interview with Carte Blanche, Minister of
Safety and Security, Steve Tshwete, took a firm stand.

East Rand Area Commissioner, Gert de Lange, assured us that the Blom's case
was receiving the necessary attention and police detectives arrested two
suspects.

They are Justice Hlombe and Norman Msomi, one of whom was already in custody
for another offence. His accomplice was arrested at the George Goch Hostel in
Jeppe, Johannesburg.

Police also recovered the Blom's car and various other stolen items. The men
have been positively linked to at least one other robbery and rape case in
the area, which occurred on the night we broadcast our story.

Hlombe and Msomi have appeared in court in Germiston.

In an e-mail, the Bloms thanked police detectives for their efforts at
solving the case, as well as members of the public for their support.

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