‘Haul meant for war’

January 12 2011 at 07:44am
By Staff Reporters
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Supplied
The National Police Commissioner, General Bheki Cele, was ecstatic to learn that members of the Gauteng police seized a large arms cache saying, this is the best Christmas and New Year present I could have asked for.
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The inventory reads like an apartheid-era arms cache, but instead it lists a weapons haul found yesterday in Katlehong. By evening, police still could not say where the stash had come from nor for what it was intended - except it was enough to start a small war.

“This is the best Christmas and New Year presents I could’ve asked for,” said an ecstatic National Police Commissioner, General Bheki Cele, who went to the scene to view the cache.

“These guys are preparing for war, whatever kind of war,” he said.

“They are prepared to assassinate because those things are usually used to assassinate.”

The weapons might have been intended for mall robberies, he said. “These guys don’t carry broomsticks or sjamboks, they carry serious stuff.”

The weapons, discovered in the back room of a small house, were listed as: five mini-limpet mines, four detonators, two rocket launchers, six F1 hand grenades, one CSC rifle grenade, two AK-47 rifles, three Uzi sub-machine guns, one R1 rifle, one .303 rifle, one silencer, and ammunition for AK-47s, R1s, R5s, a 9mm pistol, a shotgun and a .38 revolver.


A team of investigators acted on intelligence which led them to an out-building of a house in Mukhari Street, Khumalo Valley in Katlehong where they uncovered a stash of explosives, firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
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Police, who said they found the cache after a tip-off, also discovered a bundle of gold bracelets.

“A team of investigators acted on intelligence which led them to an out-building of a house in Mukhari Street, Khumalo Valley, in Katlehong,” said national police spokesman Colonel Vishnu Naidoo.

Cele thanked the crime intelligence and organised crime unit members for finding the cache.

“These people have accrued this stash of arms for one thing only and that is to wage war. You have done very well to detect them, possibly averting very serious crimes from being committed”, said Cele.

The police have sent the cache to ballistics specialists in Pretoria.

Various experts, including forensics investigators, are being brought in to determine the source of the cache. Police said this could lead to the discovery of other such caches.

Cele was confident that the police would soon arrest more suspects.

While the origin of the cache is still a source of speculation only, it is not the sort of armoury usually associated with gangs of robbers.

“These seem to be a hangover from the pre-1994 conflicts,” said former Truth and Reconciliation investigator Piers Pigou, who is now project manager at the Foundation for Human Rights.

“It does raise serious questions about the post-1994 conflicts and how many of those weapons remain in circulation.”

Katlehong was the site of ongoing conflicts, particularly between residents in the ANC-dominated areas and residents of the IFP-dominated hostels, during the 1990s.

Mukhari Street, where the cache was found, is near Ntombizodwa school in AP Khumalo section, near the main Kumalo Street which runs through Thokoza and Katlehong.

In Mukhari Street, people were shocked to hear of the discovery of the arms cache.

One of the neighbours, who refused to be named because she feared for her safety, said the owner of the house was an elderly woman who lived there with one of her daughters and three grandchildren.

Both women were apparently at the premises when police arrived; the elderly woman was arrested but not her daughter.

The daughter and her children left the premises after police left.

The neighbour said the weapons were found in one of the three vacant back rooms outside the main house.

She said the elderly woman and her family had been living in the house since about 1986 but that the house was almost always empty.

“She doesn’t live here most of the year, that’s why I am shocked that they would take her,” the neighbour said. The arrested woman is understood to have two other children, a daughter who is married and a son who hadn’t been seen at the house for a long time.

“They are not really social people,” the neighbour said. - Pretoria News

The Star

Comments by Sonny

This is obvious!

If the government controls the ANC - Or the ANC controls the government, then they

should be accountable for these arms?

If criminal elements are responsible for the possession of these arms, then they are

terrorists against the State!

Who is responsible for the proliferation of 'Arms of War' in SA?

Were these arms perhaps not planted by agents of the State to scare people into

voting for them in 2011??

THE TRUTH WILL OUT - EVEN IF ITS THROUGH WIKILEAKS!!

It is possible that these 'ARMS of war' were stolen from the STATE!!

What do the ANC MK War Vets know about these arms??