Johannesburg - The police brigadier who filed an urgent application to avoid testifying against her colleague in a fraud case has been told to stop wasting the court’s time.
Benoni cluster commander Brigadier Vuyokazi Ndebele was suspended in August after she was criminally charged for alleged fraud relating to the recruitment of entry-level SAPS candidates in the Moroka policing cluster in Soweto.
She was accused of changing the recommended list of recruits to include candidates who had not met the SAPS’s minimum specifications.
In January, the charges against her were dropped and instituted against another officer involved in the hiring, Captain Johannes Mokheseng. The internal disciplinary against Ndebele also vindicated the brigadier, her lawyer James Ndebele (no relation) said.
Mokheseng’s fraud trial was set to continue yesterday, and the State subpoenaed the brigadier to testify as a witness.
On Friday, Ndebele tried to avoid testifying through an urgent application in the high court in Joburg.
In an affidavit submitted as part of the application, Ndebele said: “The purpose of this application is to set that subpoena aside as a violation of my constitutionally entrenched right to a fair trial, including my rights to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, to silence and to be protected from self-incrimination.”
On Friday, the application failed, with the presiding judge chastising her and the legal team for trying to defeat the ends of justice. Judge Bashir Vally noted that while the brigadier was fully within her rights to refuse to answer questions on the stand, it would not be legally appropriate for her not to testify altogether.
The judge said the legal system would not function if people did not testify in such cases.
On Monday Mokheseng’s trial in the Protea Magistrate’s Court was again delayed after Ndebele’s lawyer requested time for the State to meet the brigadier to finalise a comprehensive statement before she took the stand.
While presiding magistrate Herman Badenhorst seemed irritated by the request, telling Ndebele to stop wasting the court’s time, he allowed the postponement because Mokheseng’s legal representative also required Ndebele’s statement to use as part of the defence’s case.
The Star