Johannesburg - A former national boxing champion has been reduced to penury, with only his monthly pension grant for income, after numerous attempts to sue the state after being shot by a police officer in 1995 have come to nought.
On any given day, Aladin Stevens, 60, twiddles his thumbs at home in Toekomsrus, Randfontein. He shares the Venus Street matchbox house with his mother, Margaret, who is in frail health.
Stevens says he was shot for no apparent reason by Ockert de Tarte, a policeman at the local station, where he had gone to lay a charge against a fellow nightclub patron on a November morning 24 years ago.
The policeman had claimed that Stevens had let a friend of his escape from the police cells, a charge Stevens vehemently denies to this day.
In return, De Tarte shot the boxer through both thighs with an R5 rifle.
“I know nothing about anyone who had escaped. The court also found against him for giving false witness,” says Stevens.
Asked for details of what stood in the records, Captain Lungelo Dlamini said the case was finalised at court and the accused was found not guilty and discharged on February 23, 1998.
Stevens says De Tarte was swiftly moved from Toekomsrus.
He sifts through some paperwork and finds among these receipts of payment made to his lawyers, Messrs Van Vuuren and Esterhuizen, respectively. “They have since retired,” Stevens says.
In his heyday, Stevens was the South African lightweight champion and, at the time of the shooting, was ranked fourth in the World Boxing Association (WBA) rankings. He was a three-time South African lightweight champion and had, in his last fight, earned R25000. According to an affidavit deposed by his former trainer, Andries Steyn, Stevens was going places: “I have no doubt to say that Aladin stood a very good chance to progress to a world title and win it.”
The damage to his legs put paid to a promising boxing career.
Stevens has knocked on many doors, to no avail. He wrote a letter, dated February 12, 2003 to the Law Society of South Africa pleading for help with his claim against the then Department of Safety and Security.
A week later, a response from the Law Society, signed by Arno Botha, director: professional affairs, said: “I remember you well as an excellent boxer.
“If your case is being handled by an attorney, there is nothing that anyone can do. I suggest that you ask your attorney for a written report, because in my view the matter has taken a very long time and should have gone to court already.”
Stevens says: “All I want to do is to clear my name. I got shot for nothing. I did not do what they accused me of.”
He thinks compensation from the state would at least mitigate his current financial woes.
Sontaga Seisa, acting national spokesperson at the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, says the incident falls outside its mandate: “The incident took place even before the Independent Complaints Directorate, which came into effect in 1997. Ipid came into effect in April, 2012.”