Durban - A Verulam man who spent four years in jail after a relative falsely accused him of rape, has finally had his name cleared by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
Zwelakhe Luthuli was convicted in 2000 for the rape of his 14-year-old relative and sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Verulam Regional Court.
In a recent judgment, his conviction and sentence was set aside by the SCA.
In 2004, Luthuli appealed to the high court and was granted bail and leave to appeal to the SCA after the alleged victim, Portia Phahla, who is now deceased, made a statement to police and admitted she had lied about the rape.
She also said she was willing to confirm this in testimony before the court.
In the trial, Phahla testified that Luthuli had raped her on several occasions between November 1997 and March 1998, but Luthuli denied it.
On Thursday Luthuli said going to prison had caused emotional trauma and pain.
“I am glad that I can put it behind me now. I have been trying to rebuild my life, but it is not easy to start again,” he said.
His attorney Burt Laing said Luthuli had got a raw deal and they were considering possible civil action against the State.
Laing said the matter had taken several years to be heard because the record had gone missing.
In support of the appeal before the high court, Phahla said in an affidavit that her mother had questioned her about having a boyfriend after she found out that she was not a virgin. Phahla said at the time she was too scared to tell her mother that she had a boyfriend, Mduduzi, and had had consensual sex with him, because she was afraid she would be “beaten and thrown out of the house”.
She said after further questioning by her aunts, she implicated Luthuli but said she did not “appreciate that the appellant (Luthuli) would be arrested and put into prison”.
“They asked me if it was Zwelakhe (Luthuli) and it seemed they wanted me to say it was him. I hoped if I did (implicate him), nothing further would happen.”
SCA Judge Lex Mpati said there was a “ring of truth” in Phahla’s affidavit, especially that she feared that her mother would beat her if she admitted she had a boyfriend.
Judge Mpati said the testimony of a district surgeon who found old bruises on Phahla from apparently being hit with a sjambok confirmed that her mother “did not spare the rod”.
He said the court was satisfied that an order be granted remitting the case back to the trial court for the hearing of further evidence. however Phahla, her boyfriend and a police officer who had taken Phahla’s statement were all deceased.
“The difficulty for the appellant (Luthuli) is that the evidence he seeks to lead is no longer available. In my view, it would be a travesty of justice for him to be denied the order because it would be impossible to lead the evidence.”
Judge Mpati said, aside from Phahla’s recanting of evidence, he had doubts about the conviction because there had been various contradictions in Phahla’s evidence before the trial court.
The Mercury