“It appears as if corruption has become part of our culture and will soon became part of the DNA in our society.
“It is the responsibility of the court that robust sentences will be meted out to those convicted of corruption. If justice is too lenient, it is catastrophic for society.”
This was just one small part of Albertus Roux’s damning ruling against former Randburg magistrate Johannes Kgomo who was yesterday sentenced at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s court to 15 years in prison for two counts of corruption.
Roux told Kgomo he had “tarnished the image of magistrates” everywhere.
Kgomo, however, seemed unfazed as he stood in the corner of the large dock, as far as possible from Magistrate Roux and his ruling.
Because of Kgomo’s lack of remorse and to send a message to other corrupt government officials, Magistrate Roux decided to stick to the minimum 15-year sentence for each charge, though they would be served concurrently.
Kgomo was caught in a Hawks sting in 2011, accepting a R150 000 bribe to influence a fellow magistrate who was presiding over the extradition case of Paul Mthabela.
Mthabela was wanted in Botswana for allegedly defrauding that country’s medical aid of more than R17million. While Mthabela was later exonerated in Botswana, he managed to avoid his own criminal prosecution for taking part in the bribery by turning State witness against Kgomo.
The former magistrate’s lawyer, Paul Leisher, immediately applied for leave to appeal the sentence and conviction yesterday. Leisher’s argument focused on what he claimed was Magistrate Roux’s failure to properly weigh up witness evidence, essentially accusing Roux of bias and incompetence.
Leisher argued that Mthabela was an unreliable witness who had lied about ever having been to Botswana, and contradicted himself on numerous occasions. He said the court had erred in taking Mthabela’s testimony as fact, and declaring Kgomo a poor witness.
The magistrate dismissed the leave to appeal application as he did not believe it would have any reasonable prospect of success in another court.
When Leisher tried to excuse himself from court after the application, it was Magistrate Roux who questioned why Leisher had not launched a bail application for his client pending a high court petition to appeal the ruling.
Leisher launched the application on the basis that Kgomo had already been on bail for two years, throughout the trial, and that it was likely that leave to appeal would be granted by the high court.
However, prosecutor Michelle Bayat argued that while she was glad Kgomo had previously adhered to his bail conditions, that was before he was found guilty and sentenced.
She said it was common for sentenced prisoners - when granted bail pending an appeal - to delay appeal proceedings to ensure they did not see the inside of a prison for years.