A CHIEF prosecutor has allegedly purged senior prosecutors and replaced them with juniors “who can’t prosecute high-profile cases” involving alleged child rapists and murderers. She also arbitrarily instructed her junior prosecutors to refuse to appear before a magistrate in court.
These are just some of the accusations against advocate Pumeza Futshane, the chief prosecutor of the Johannesburg Regional Court.
Despite her arbitrary decisions, no action has been taken against her.
Futshane’s order for prosecutors not to appear before magistrate Hasina Habib in court 22 has contributed to the backlog in cases. Now Habib wants the immediate intervention of the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shaun Abrahams.
This is after another senior National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) official in the Joburg office, advocate Andrew Chauke, failed to resolve the impasse.
Chauke, the director of public prosecutions in the high court in Joburg, is married to Futshane.
Futshane has, according to evidence in court, been purg- ing her staff of senior prosecutors, replacing them with juniors, allegedly instructing them not to proceed with high-profile cases. This caused a major backlog in the court roll.
The situation worsened when Futshane allegedly assigned inexperienced and ill-prepared prosecutors to deal with these serious matters, including robbery with aggravating circumstances, which agitated Habib.
These prosecutors were then sent packing by the court, resulting in the indefinite postponement of numerous high-profile cases, according to evidence in court.
One of the affected cases involved the rape of an underage child. In this case, the DNA results were present in court and were also handed to the defence lawyer to help the accused to prepare a plea explanation.
The matter was postponed due to the unavailability of a prosecutor.
As more cases were affected, Habib then summoned Futshane and Chauke as well as regional court president Moli- beli Djadje and other senior court officials to a meeting to resolve the impasse. The meeting, held late last month, failed to reach any solution, after Futshane and Chauke walked out.
The court heard that that led to Habib convening a legal inquiry to get to the bottom of the issue. She summoned Chauke to appear before the inquiry, but he failed to do so. Instead, he asked his junior, advocate Daniel Dakana, to appear and that irked Habib.
During the inquiry hearing, the court heard that one of the prosecutors said she was unable to prosecute in one the cases for fear of losing her job. Others said they were instructed not to put the cases for trial by their seniors, allegedly acting on Futshane’s instructions.
The court heard how three senior public prosecutors were demoted to the family court to deal with maintenance cases. That was despite their vast knowledge in sexual offences and murder cases.
One of them is Nthabiseng Mokoena, a senior public prosecutor for 13 years. Futshane “arbitrarily” moved her to the maintenance court on April 1. She was responsible for the Sexual Offences Unit and had powers to prosecute rapists.
Testifying in the inquiry, Mokoena said: “Advocate Futshane just informed that I should report to the family court on April 1. That was not discussed with me prior to the decision. Similar decisions were made against two other senior public prosecutors who were earlier also moved to the family court. I know that the two had a tiff with advocate Futshane. I did not have. She just told me that I am moving.”
Mokoena resigned last week.
During the inquiry, the defence lawyers for the accused tried to apply for the cases against their clients to be struck off the roll until the administration problems had been resolved.
Habib, however, dismissed their application and ruled that the matter needed Abrahams’s urgent intervention. The cases against all the accused were postponed to September 23.