13 February 2025
Lisakhanya Noyi says he was badly beaten by an off-duty police officer. Photo: supplied
A Cape Town man claims he was brutally beaten by an off-duty police officer and three other men after being wrongly accused of robbery, leaving him hospitalised for days over the New Year.
Lisakhanya Noyi, 26, said he and his cousin, Buhle Noyi, 21, both of whom live in Ekuphumuleni informal settlement in Dunoon, Cape Town, left his sister-in-law’s birthday party shortly before 9pm on Sunday 29 December to meet Lisakhanya’s girlfriend near the Dunoon taxi rank. Unable to find her, they walked along Tulip Street toward Mnandi Street, where they were stopped by a group of three men.
Lisakhanya Noyi says one of the men, later identified as an off-duty police officer, accused them of robbing him outside his home on the same street. The group insisted that three men – including Lisakhanya and Buhle - had stolen his cellphone.
Lisakhanya says the men ordered him and Buhle to sit down. Fearing for their safety, they complied, only to be interrogated. He says he pleaded with the men to search them, and when they did, and did not find the phone, the off-duty police officer accused them of having handed the phone to a third person. Lisakhanya asked how that was possible, at which point, he says the officer started slapping his cousin.
“I saw my cousin being beaten, and then they turned on me. That’s when I told him (Buhle), ‘let’s run from the attack’,” said Lisakhanya.
Buhle managed to escape, but Lisakhanya unknowingly ran straight into a fourth man who was part of the group but hadn’t been there when they were first confronted.
What followed was a beating so brutal that he blacked out, he says.
He was dropped off at Dunoon Community Health Centre in a police van the next morning. The officially recorded time of admittance in his medical file was 4:45am. The file listed head trauma, including multiple facial and skull lacerations.
He woke up two days later, on New Year’s Day, in the New Somerset Hospital. He could not eat solid food, or even feed himself.
Lisakhanya, who has a job as a cleaner in Killarney Gardens, said the attack has left him angry. “Every time I see a police van, it infuriates me,” he says.
Lisakhanya Noyi and his mother Kholiswa Gaba, who says police have yet to explain how her son ended up with severe facial and skull lacerations. Photo: Peter Luhanga
His mother, Kholiswa Gaba, 53, said she was woken during the night of 29 December by a commotion outside her home in Ekuphumuleni.
Gaba said when she opened the door, she found a uniformed police officer and other men who told her to let them in to search for guns linked to her sons, of whom Lisakhanya is the youngest.
Stepping outside, she saw a police van parked near the Dunoon municipal hall. There was a man lying in a puddle of stagnant water nearby. She said Lisakhanya’s brother saw that it was Lisakhanya lying there, badly injured.
She said when she asked what had happened, the uniformed officer claimed Lisakhanya had robbed one of the other men, an off-duty police officer, at gunpoint.
She said she saw officers place her son in the back of a police van. But when she went to Milnerton police station she was told no-one matching her son’s description was in custody.
Concerned, she made her way to Dunoon Community Health Centre, expecting to find her son under police guard. When she arrived, she says she saw a police van leaving the centre. When she asked nurses about the visit, she was told that officers had checked on Lisakhanya’s condition and left.
On 30 December she went to New Somerset Hospital, where Lisakhanya had been transferred for further treatment.
“We didn’t see any officers. There were no guards, no sign of an arrest,” said Gaba.
She said the family opened a case at Milnerton Police Station on 31 December 2024.
Lisakhanya has since been discharged, but Gaba says he has had to attend follow-up appointments at Groote Schuur Hospital.
The medical records show that when police dropped him off, they told nurses he had been the victim of a “community assault”. But Dunoon Neighbourhood Watch spokesperson Bonginkosi Luthuli said there was no record of a community assault in the area on the night in question.
“If there was mob justice, we were likely to be aware of it,” said Luthuli.
Police spokesperson Captain FC van Wyk confirmed that a case of common assault had been registered at Milnerton Police station on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
“The case was transferred to IPID for further investigation,” said Van Wyk.
Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) spokesperson Phaladi Shuping confirmed that the incident had been reported to IPID.
“The matter is still under investigation, meaning the charges will only be laid against anyone once there is evidence,” said Shuping.