The Ekurhuleni metro police department superintendent accused of raping and trafficking three children has finally been suspended more than three years since his arrest.
Superintendent Adam Cummings and his young co-accused, 20-year-old Johanna Maregele, returned to the Johannesburg High Court this week where the State called one of its final witnesses who provided written evidence that Cummings allegedly committed these crimes while on duty.
According to the State’s indictment, on February 22, 2015, Maregele kidnapped the first complainant, a 9-year-old girl in Moroka, taking the child to Cummings’s vehicle.
After buying food for the child, she was taken to an abandoned stretch of veld and ordered to lie down on a blanket before Cummings allegedly raped her.
Cummings is said to have paid Maregele for kidnapping the child and that Maregele tried to give the 9-year-old R50 to buy her silence.
A month earlier, Maregele allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old from her home in White City, Soweto, also forcing her into Cummings’s vehicle which took the trio to an area past Protea.
When they arrived at an abandoned area, Cummings took a blanket from the boot of his car and placed it on the ground.
He then took a firearm from under his car seat and told the 16-year-old to have sex with him.
Even as she protested, he persisted while “playing” with the firearm. After he had raped her, he paid Maregele R200 and gave the complainant R150.
A third alleged incident from 2010 saw Cummings and Maregele kidnap a 15-year-old from her home, also taking her to a private area before raping her.
In 2016, after a series of arrests and bail applications for the three incidents, DA community safety spokesperson Michele Clarke called on the EMPD to suspend Cummings, considering the seriousness of the allegations against him. Despite three charges of rape against him, Gauteng community safety MEC Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane confirmed he had not been suspended and that following a pre-suspension hearing, there were no grounds to do so.
“Ekurhuleni residents’ safety should be the first priority of the EMPD - to have an alleged rapist in the employ of the EMPD does not instil confidence in the work of the metro police.
“Mr Cummings should do the honourable thing and step down from his position as Superintendent at the EMPD until investigations have been concluded,” Clarke wrote at the time.
However, this week, The Saturday Star was told by a source at the EMPD that Cummings had been suspended this year, and that internal proceedings within the EMPD were finally continuing.
At the High Court this week, prosecutor Nerisha Naidoo summoned EMPD head office employee Pieter Pretorius to testify that he had seen Cummings driving a red Toyota Etios during his visits to the EMPD head office.
This vehicle is alleged to have been used in each of the crimes.
He also confirmed that Cummings had been suspended.
Cummings’s lawyer, Charles Thompson, argued that the vehicle seen at the head office had likely been a Toyota Yaris, Cummings’s daughter’s car that he had probably been driving at the times when he was spotted by Pretorius.
After this brief testimony, the case was postponed until December due to Thompson’s unavailability for the next four months.
Bail for Maragele and Cummings was extended.