Bungle Justice

Along the way the matter sank into a morass of ridiculousness, a comedy of errors, a parody of dodgy endeavours masquerading as justice being seen to be done.

- Susan Puren

IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR NOSEWEEK posed the following rhetorical question about South Africa’s justice system in an editorial: “Whether the accused are guilty or not, when a criminal prosecution has been in process for 16 years, isn’t it time to question the morality, the sanity of it all? That’s apart from questioning the competence of the prosecution, or reckoning the outrageous cost to the accused and the taxpayer.” These remarks were prompted by the (still) ongoing trial, before Judge Brian Spilg in the South Gauteng High Court of Gary Porritt and Sue Bennett, who were arrested in December 2002 and March 2003 respectively on numerous criminal charges related to their management of a company called Tigon (nose229).

A reader brought another relatively recent case to Noseweek’s attention where the same issues led to the termination of a case in the Western Cape High Court:

On 16 May last year acting Judge Rob Stelzner issued an order that 17 cases of fraud and theft against a former Southern Cape attorney, Koos Grobbelaar, be withdrawn and never be instituted again. Grobbelaar’s bail money of R5,000 was returned, his passport handed back to him and he no longer had to report to the police once a week.

The order brought finality to a case that started seven years earlier in 2011 when Grobbelaar first appeared in court in Riversdale in the Southern Cape after being arrested by the Stilbaai police. Since then the case has dragged on and on with more and more people joining the list of alleged victims until there were 17 complainants. Yet the police and the prosecuting authority were seemingly unable to finalise the charge sheet.