Carjacking: the new leader of South African crime (continued)
Part 3 of 4
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Instructor Richard Brussow, who, as a police officer has seen the aftermath of carjackings gone wrong, works hard to dispel this notion. "You're a fool if you still believe this," he says firmly.

The film continues with a sequence of simulated hijacking scenes involving

frightened blond women throwing their hands in the air and black bandits frantically waving AK-47s. But Brussow points out that 62% of the people hijacked in South Africa are actually black men, and cab drivers are the most vulnerable of all.

Gilbert Mlambo is a typical example. He was driving two young men to their destination in Johannesburg in early March when his passengers suddenly pointed guns at his head and told him to get out of the car. Mlambo gave up his cab without a fight. "My life was more important than my car," he says now, steering his new cab through thick traffic in downtown Johannesburg. He estimates that the loss of his 1991 Honda Palad put him out about $5,000. He has no expectations of ever seeing his car again, at least not in one piece. Like many South Africans, Mlambo believes the police are in collusion with the car-jackers. "The worst part is they're working with those guys," he says with a sigh.

Police officers in South Africa start out making only $330 a month , and some like Mlambo speculate that illegal car and parts sales supplement their income. When stolen cars are confiscated by the police throughout the city and its surrounding townships, they are deposited in a concrete expanse called "lot 13". Rows and rows of cars sit in the hot sun unclaimed, many of them stripped down to little more than steel shells.

Inspector Christopher Hatan, a portly white police officer who works out of an office abutting the car lot, says such accusations are false. The real culprits, he says, are the people living in nearby squatter camps,who sneak into the lot at night and strip the cars for parts they can later sell. "Everyone's suffering," he says sympathetically. "People are hungry, unemployed. If I was hungry I might do the same." What is unclear is exactly how people could sneak into the lot, which is surrounded by an electrical barbed-wire fence. Hatan dismisses the question with a shake of his head. "It's not always the police," he insists.

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