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The tip of the iceberg
09/06/2008 08:44 - (SA)
Jon Qwelane
The chickens are slowly coming home to roost, and soon die poppe sal dans!
This week the Protea magistrate's court dismissed the wishy-washy contradictory "evidence" concocted by one Simphiwe Ngqokuthu, in yet another of the several hyped-up and trumped cases involving Ithuteng Educational Trust and its members.
The state has really made an ass of itself in those many cases. On Monday one of Ithuteng's students, Simon Setlaba, was found not guilty in a case magistrate Robert Buttom described as "the tip of an iceberg" and said "no reasonable court" could make a conviction based on the evidence given by Ngqokuthu.
The "tip of an iceberg" was an apt description of the monumental chicanery and harassment through downright lies, dishonest reporting and undisguised enmity towards the sterling success that is Ithuteng. Pity that some people seem to believe all the nonsense peddled by a certain lousy newspaper, which has illegally stolen cellphone records and concocted a tissue of lies to strengthen its so-called "investigation".
There are several intriguing and remarkable factors about this week's case: First, the accuser was the same Ngqokuthu who levelled exactly the same charges against Jacqueline "Mama Jackey" Maarohanye and two of her associates, Ronnie "Papa Action" Nyakale and Mpho Makgathe.
Second, the magistrate hearing the case against Maarohanye and her comrades made the perplexing finding of "guilty". In that case, Ngqokuthu had again contradicted his own testimony, and a witness at whose house he claimed to have been kidnapped refuted the claims. The "medical certificate" he produced was attacked as false, because of the contradictions with his oral evidence.
Third, Ngqokuthu denied in court this week that the boasts reported in the copy before court of Drum magazine were his. The boasts appeared under the headline: "How I brought down Mama Jackey."
He was reminded by Ike Motloung, Setlaba's defence attorney, that he had also been a "media star" on television during the days following Maarohanye's conviction - she is appealing against the verdict - when he had also boasted about his "victory".
Fourth, what does it all say about the state of "justice" at the Protea magistrate's court? Three white judicial officers hearing the three hyped-up and related cases involving Maarohanye last year all returned verdicts of "not guilty" after giving lucid reasons, yet the one black magistrate hearing a similar case with the same complainant and charges was the only one to make a finding of "guilty" in highly controversial circumstances.
This week the most remarkable thing of all was that Ngqokuthu, darling of the never-investigating so-called "investigative" reporters, denied outright the huge song and dance he had earlier made about having been burnt and severely assaulted during his claimed kidnap and assault, and those claims earned Maarohanye and her two colleagues the astonishing conviction last time Ngqokuthu played victim in court.
Denials
This past Monday, however, he denied point-blank that he had been assaulted and given burns by anybody - and again those media practitioners who had dutifully documented Ngqokuthu's imagined woes as fact, never tried to reconcile his sudden lack of recollection with the swashbuckling bravado he displayed during the earlier hearing. Magistrate Buttom shook his head visibly, either in numb shock or disbelief at the witness's verbal trapeze act in the box.
And that is the major downfall of some in the media today: quick to sensationalise rubbish, yet slow or too damned lazy to make sure that the rubbish they write at least has a ring of truth to it.
I will never understand why South Africans choose to be so apathetic when Ithuteng, doing so much excellent work, is being viciously savaged by some rogue media types and their Kliptown police cohorts, even as their lies and dishonesty get so routinely exposed by the courts.
And why do I say die poppe sal dans?
My unyielding support of Ithuteng Trust and what its executive director stands for has caused some despicable individuals on a certain newspaper to violate my constitutional rights to privacy and dignity. With the active assistance of a cellphone company employee, they hacked into my cellphone conversations and SMS messages.
They also lied to government employees to obtain my personal SA Revenue Service (Sars) file, and the two young idiots whom the bossman used to do his dirty work and lie on his behalf to Sars are now in deep trouble.
Nowadays, believe me, my phone "phones itself" to leave MY number as a missed call! The cellular shop nearby has checked the phone, and assures me that it works properly - someone must be tampering with my PIN. My personal investigations led to a particular editor, against whom I have since laid criminal charges, and the noose is closing fast.
It is evil that supposedly "respectable" people can stoop to the level of the sewers like that, but with me they have picked on a very kwaai individual. I promise that soon I will reveal their names and the type of filth they have been up to.
Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.
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