2011-01-04 PARYS. Free State. – 38-year-old Wikus van Zyl of Parys went through a three-hour nightmare kidnapping ordeal, when six armed black males kept him imprisoned in a small house in the dusty, crime-infested Sebokeng township, about 30km away from Johannesburg. One black man kept threatening to kill him, ominously running his knife across Van Zyl’s body.
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The traumatised Van Zyl said he kept thinking of his wife, their two-year-old son and their unborn baby throughout his ordeal. And then to add insult to injury, four police officers at four different police stations then refused to help him lodge a formal complaint or to even investigate the house.
They claimed “that could only be done at Sebokeng” – and Van Zyl was terrified of going back into the township. “I could show the police right now where that house is located in Sebokeng, I can identify four of the six men who held me captive,’ he said. I cannot understand why the police don’t want to help. It’s always as if they don’t feel like helping.’ Parys SAPS spokesman Maselela Langa claims it was all a ‘misunderstanding.’
“Let the man go and speak to the station commander,’ he added.
Van Zyl got drawn into his ordeal after he had arranged to find a buyer for his bakkie, a Namibian man, and had arranged to meet the Namibian man at a dealership in Vanderbijlpark. The two men went to the bank after the buyer had viewed the car. The man claimed at the bank that he didn’t have the entire cash amount for the car and that another meeting would have to be arranged. This was done just before Christmas, again in Vanderbijlpark.
“The man already knew my car and as I arrived at the parking lot of the dealership two men climbed into the bakkie with me and told me to drive to Sebokeng. The prospective buyer was waiting for him there with five other men, who all claimed they were ‘police detectives’. They accused Van Zyl of smuggling diamonds and threatened to ‘arrest him’. They took him to a small house and kept him inside, with the man with the knife threatening him while others kept on intimidating him demanding that he give them his bank card and pincode.
“A sturdily-built man came to me then and told me I had to go with him. I thought to mysef well this is it, I am going to be murdered’. The kidnappers then told Van Zyl to ‘drive away and never come back again’. The terrified Van Zyl’s ordeal with the cops started shortly thereafter when he stopped a police vehicle in Sebokeng. “Those cops told me I should be happy that I am still alive and that they can’t do a thing for me,’ he said.
Then Van Zyl drove to the police stations at Sasolburg, Parys eand Vanderbijlpark, where he also was turned away..http://www.volksblad.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Polisie-wys-man-glo-weg-na-nagmerrie-ervaring-
