Norma Mngoma has turned to the Pretoria High Court to have her July 31 arrest, in which her former husband Malusi Gigaba was one of the complainants, declared unlawful. She has also detailed her jail experience.
Pretoria – Norma Mngoma, the wife of former finance minister Malusi Gigaba, will turn to the courts later this month to have her arrest and prosecution declared unlawful.
She said her “entire” arrest was an orchestrated scheme to intimidate and bully her and to ultimately gain unlawful access to her gadgets and to delete specific information.
She said her arrest is no more than a campaign to tarnish her good name and reputation for nefarious reasons.
She promised that in due course the names of the participants and their true motives will be revealed after the investigations have been concluded.
Mngoma made these allegations in papers filed this week in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, where she is asking for an order setting aside her arrest and subsequent prosecution.
She is also asking that the confiscation of her gadgets be declared unlawful and that all the information which was removed from it be restored.
The application against the police and the Hawks is due to be heard on September 15.
The respondents have until September 7 to file their answering affidavits.
Mngoma, who uses the surname Gigaba in her affidavit, was arrested on Friday July 31 at the Gigabas Waterkloof home she shares with her politically powerful husband.
She was released on R5 000 bail the next day, a Saturday afternoon. She is due to appear in court again on September 14.
It is claimed she had damaged a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon worth over R2m which her husband had borrowed.
She also faces a charge of crimen injuria following an alleged text message she sent to Peterson Siyaya, a former unionist.
Mngoma said members of the Hawks first came to her home about 10 days before her arrest.
According to Mngoma, her husband had assured her from the get-go that he did not lay any criminal charges against her regarding the car incident.
“I believed him until the truth was subsequently and shockingly revealed.”
On the first visit members of the Hawks, they took pictures of the damaged car. They also ordered her to hand over all her electronic gadgets.
They insisted to take each and every gadget in her possession, she said.
Mngoma said she was petrified and was also refused permission to call her lawyer.
Her husband was home throughout the ordeal, she said. Mngoma also said she was refused permission to phone her lawyer, as the officers said this was not permitted during a Hawks investigation.
The officers told her she was under arrest as her husband had opened a case against her for scratching the car, as well as for the crimen injuria charge.
The officers, however, eventually left after she gave them the pin codes to all her devices.
Mngoma said she subsequently went to the Brooklyn Police Station to enquire about the cases against her and she found out the one case was opened by her husband and the other by Siyaya.
But, surprisingly, she said, there were no dockets and no statements made by the complainants.
She also established that the Hawks officers involved were not from Pretoria, but from Mpumalanga.
Mngoma said she tried to persuade her husband to ask the officers to return her gadgets, but despite his promises to do so, he never did.
She eventually did a SIM swap on her phone and discovered some information had been wiped out.
Mngoma said her devices were eventually returned to her (after she was released from custody) and after she threatened legal proceedings and told her husband that she was going to report the harassment to the ANC’s leadership.
She noted certain information was deleted from her devices and that they were tampered with.
“The full nature and extent to which my gadgets were tampered with and the removed information is not yet clear. Every attempt by my attorneys to ascertain such information has been met with stalling tactics.”
Mngoma said when she was arrested on July 31 and taken to the police station, she had to spent a night in a cell with two inmates who refused to wear their masks.
She said her arrest and detention was planned to take place on a Friday so that she had to spend the weekend in a cell before she could be taken to court, but her lawyer eventually managed to obtain bail.
Mngoma said after her legal team was eventually able to see the case docket against her, it was clear there was no basis for her arrest.
“It was entirely triggered by an ulterior and corrupt motive, either to punish me or to get hold of my electronic equipment,” she said.
Pretoria News