Johannesburg - Soured relations between senior officials in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court have seen skirmishes between a senior magistrate and a chief prosecutor plunge the administration of justice into disarray.
The situation reached boiling point on Friday when several cases involving alleged child rapists and murderers, which were to be heard by senior magistrate Hasina Habib, were re-allocated to other magistrates after Habib was removed and sent to the civil court.
Habib’s removal followed a complaint lodged by Director of Public Prosecutions advocate Andrew Chauke to the Magistrate's Commission on July 29.
However, the main complainant in Chauke’s grievance against Habib is chief prosecutor Pumeza Futshane, who is Chauke’s wife.
Prior to the complaint being lodged with the Magistrate's Commission, tensions were already simmering between Habib and Futshane.
On September 5, Habib conducted an inquiry in terms of Section 342A of the Criminal Procedure Act, in her bid to find out why prosecutors appearing before courts were not scheduling serious criminal cases for trial.
Habib told the court that, since July this year, she had been allocated inexperienced prosecutors who were allegedly coming to court without having read the court dockets and had not even fully prepared witnesses for trial.
Habib then summoned the outgoing senior prosecutor, Nthabiseng Mokoena, to unravel the reasons behind the delay of criminal cases. In her testimony, Mokoena placed the blame squarely on Futshane.
She told the court she has been a senior prosecutor for 13 years and her duties included assigning prosecutors to deal with sexual offences and other criminal cases.
However, according to Mokoena, she was demoted when Futshane, who took over as the chief prosecutor, allegedly assigned junior prosecutors to do her work.
She said most of those prosecutors were simply taken from lower courts and had allegedly been told by Futshane to prosecute in the regional court, especially Court 22, which deals with serious offences.
According to Mokoena, a prosecutor from a lower court, as part of a promotion to the regional court, should first begin his or her training at Court 13, which deals with first appearances and bail applications.
“Initially, they would be supervised by a senior prosecutor until such time as that particular prosecutor was fully ready to handle serious cases. These procedures were not followed when some of these prosecutors were appointed to hear cases in the regional court,” Mokoena said.
Due to that evidence, Habib then ordered that the records of the inquiry hearing should be brought to the attention of national director of public prosecutions Shaun Abrahams, for his decision on the alleged improper conduct of Futshane.
Habib made that decision on September 5. A decision to send the records to Abrahams spurred Chauke into action and he immediately, on September 6, contacted the Magistrate's Commission to lodge a complaint against Habib.
On September 8, Chauke furnished the commission evidence in which some of the prosecutors had accused Habib of ill-treating and insulting them in full view of members of the public in the gallery. Futshane’s affidavit was also included. In her affidavit, Futshane claimed the inquiry hearing was a farce.
“The whole inquiry was about tarnishing my name to the members of the public, covering up her abuse and harassment of the prosecutors.
“The inquiry was vindictive. It was about destroying my image, defamation of my character, destroying my dignity, destroying my reputation and humiliating me, and the inquiry was about (the) destruction of the image of my office and the NPA.
“For Mrs Mokoena, on top of the fact that she defamed my character, tarnishing my name and humiliating me, destroying my reputation in public and in front of the media, she brought the National Prosecuting Authority into disrepute because she knew she had resigned,” Futshane said.
Futshane said there was no bad blood between her, Habib and Mokoena, but she “just wanted to do my job, and my style of management is (my) prerogative. I have to exercise my discretion on dealing with issues. I am myself, I am original.
“I won't copy or adopt anybody's style of management just to please certain individuals,” Futshane said.
The commission was also furnished with affidavits of 36 other prosecutors who corroborated the version that Habib was a very difficult magistrate to work with.
However, some of those prosecutors who wrote the affidavits submitted that they had never worked with Habib, but had only heard about her conduct from other prosecutors.
When contacted for comment, Habib referred The Sunday Independent to the Magistrate's Commission.
De Villiers Bosman of the Magistrate's Commission confirmed that they had appointed a retired magistrate to hear the complaint against Habib.
The Sunday Independent