Johannesburg - A friendship spanning more than 20 years has collapsed owing to a financial dispute between two black men that allegedly led to one calling his friend a “QwaQwa k****r.”
Investec chief executive Fani Titi has taken his former friend and prominent businessman Peter-Paul Ngwenya to court, claiming he had threatened him and called him the k-word.
Ngwenya appeared on charges of crimen injuria before magistrate Pravina Rugoonandan at the Randburg Magistrate's Court on Monday.
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Rugoonandan is the same magistrate who, a month ago, sent Vicki Momberg to jail for three years after she was found guilty of racism. She had verbally abused a metro police officer who was trying to assist her after a smash-and-grab incident.
In the latest case, the two businessmen are embroiled in a messy fight over R54million allegedly owed to Ngwenya by Titi in a business deal involving radio stations Gagasi FM, Kaya FM and Heart 104.9 FM.
In June 2016, Ngwenya allegedly sent an SMS to Titi's business partner Aqueel Patel in which he called Titi, who was born in the Free State, a “QwaQwa k****r.”
“I felt horrible when I first saw those words,” said Titi. “Why would a former Robben Island prisoner call another black person a k****r?”.
Ngwenya has not yet taken the stand, but his legal team deny that he threatened to kill Titi and Patel. He is also expected to give clarity on the k-word allegations when he takes the stand.
Titi, however, told the court that he and the accused have a longstanding relationship that was respectful and cordial and that Ngwenya’s actions had been surprising.
“We had an encounter that went completely contrary to the two decades of friendship that we had accumulated,” Titi said.
After the text message was sent, Titi and Patel applied and were granted a protection order prohibiting Ngwenya from directly and indirectly threatening them.
Titi told the court that he had taken Ngwenya's threats seriously because of his military past. Ngwenya spent six years on Robben Island after he was caught transporting weapons from Botswana.
Titi testified that the financial dispute between the two had caused Ngwenya to behave uncharacteristically aggressive. He recalled an event in November 2016 where Ngwenya came to their offices demanding the money he was owed. Titi informed the court that Ngwenya threatened them.
He told the receptionist: "If they don't pay my money, I am going to kill these dogs."
Titi told the court that during that incident, which was in breach of a protection order, he had to lock himself inside his office.
He said being called a "QwaQwa k****r" was dehumanising because his family didn't have a choice but were forced by the apartheid government to live in the former bantustan.
He added: “There was a representative word of the past and reference to a homeland, which I didn't choose. Having both words used against me by an ex-Robben Islander is dehumanising.”