Daveyton 8 sentenced to 15 years each for Macia killing

The sentencing proceedings of eight policemen found guilty of murdering Mozambican taxi driver Mido Macia was expected to get under way on Wednesday.

“Each of you are sentenced to 15 years imprisonment”, High Court Judge Bert Bam said in the capital, Pretoria.

Video recorded by a witness and posted on Facebook by South Africa’s Daily Sun newspaper showed police officers chaining the man to the open back of a police van that came to the scene later and, over the loud objections of a horrified crowd, driving off, dragging the man along the road.

The video of the incident, which rekindled images of apartheid era police brutality, was filmed by an onlooker and showed minibus taxi driver Macia scuffling with police after he illegally parked his vehicle.

Macia was, a few hours after being locked up, found dead in a pool of blood in the holding cell.

‘What made their conduct more reprehensible was the cowardly attack in the cell on a defenceless and already seriously injured man’.

A post-mortem report found Macia suffered extensive head injuries, lacerations and bruising.

“This was a barbaric act committed by the police, who are there to protect the community, and not to kill the community”, said a lawyer for Macia’s family, Jose Nascimento.

“But we are totally not happy with the judgement and the sentence that was imposed today”.

A judiciary inquiry into the killings laid much of the blame on the police force for its conduct in trying to disperse the strikers, but no officers have yet been charged over those killings.