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her in the car. They were driving around with her for 10 minutes before they said, look we don’t want to rape you or kill you, we just want the car and jewellery and anything else you’ve got.
‘They dropped her in Effingham, which is the north side of Durban, on the side of the road, and they gave her her phone back so she could go phone someone. Eventually a guard vehicle picked her up.’
He paused, stared out of the window at the city flashing past, one hand toying with the holster of his sidearm.
‘When I got the call that she had been hijacked and they took her with them in the vehicle, I thought, she’s a beautiful girl, long blonde hair, she’s going to get raped, shot in the head or something. And she’s got a son, a good rugby player, so I really thought, hey, what must I do now? If she gets shot I’ve got to try and find the body, you know? Not a good feeling. Thank God nothing happened.’
We asked him how he felt about it now, starting another shift.
‘It feels weird,’ he said. ‘I was very angry last night, because I’d just finished shift and you work the whole day thinking about the theft of motor vehicles, hijacking and so on, and then you just come off duty and it happens to someone you know. You get a lot of anger, yeah?
‘There was nothing she could do. She was a harmless woman – why go for a harmless female? Cowards, that’s what they are.’
He paused again, and flashed that quick grin. ‘But as I say, every dog has his day. If they must keep on hijacking, if they must keep on doing what they want, then one day they might drive into my police car…and then they are over. Know what I mean?’
As if on cue, his partner Chapman pointed silently out of the window and Steyn snapped back into cop mode. A car in front was behaving suspiciously – we watched as it jumped first one, then another red light.
As we accelerated towards the vehicle, Steyn was already reading the licence plate number into his radio – though as he pointed out later, the problem with carjackings is that the victim doesn’t have time to report the car as stolen, or at least not until it’s too late.
Within seconds we were hard on their bumper and Chapman gave them a flick of the siren. ‘Pull your vehicle off!’ ordered Steyn through a loudspeaker, ‘Pull off now!’ As the car slowed and parked, we were right behind them.
The sun had set now, and outside there was no light other than our headlights. The occupants of the car were just silhouettes: we could see they were two men, but little more than that.
Ordering us to stay put, Steyn and Chapman drew their weapons and cautiously approached. As they stalked towards the car, half-crouching, side-on, flanking the vehicle, hands steady over their guns, Steyn barked orders. ‘Switch your car off. Get out. Get out. Let me see your hands. Get out of the car NOW.’
The two men emerged, slowly, arms raised. To be fair, they looked terrified. ‘Turn around,’ they were ordered. ‘Hands on the roof.’ Both were patted down quickly, expertly, and everyone relaxed a little.
But not much. ‘Why did you run two red lights?’ demanded Steyn, his weapon still drawn. ‘Where’s your driver’s licence? How much have you had to drink?’
These boys weren’t carjackers – but the driver was under the influence. This time they were let off with a slapped wrist…But none of us had ever seen a drink-driver questioned at the point of a machine-gun before.
‘A lot of policemen get shot in South Africa when they just walk up to the car,’ explained Steyn. ‘You can’t just walk up to the car and just say, “Hello sir, get out of the vehicle.” It’s totally different here. They can fire at you. They can shoot you stone dead. Before you know it, your partner’s on the ground and you can’t react. So you have to approach every car tactically. That’s how you survive.’
He wasn’t just reciting training manual theory, either. Steyn and Chapman recently chased and confronted a car containing four armed robbers. It was a chase that quickly became lethal.
‘As we approached the car the guy started firing,’ he explained. ‘The bullets hit the wall behind us, shrapnel hit our bullet-proofs. Came past us like that…unfortunately I had to shoot back at him.’
We pulled back into the Durban night-time traffic and Steyn didn’t seem about to offer any more. So…we eventually asked him what happened. ‘Oh, he was deceased,’ he shrugged. ‘The other three ran away but the next day they were found in hospital with bullet wounds.’
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