Thatcher fine sparks anger

2005-01-13 21:04

Johannesburg - Political parties are at loggerheads about whether British businessman Mark Thatcher should have been allowed to plea bargain on Thursday.

And, legal experts disagree about the wisdom of the decision.

Accused of contributing financing towards a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, Thatcher pleaded guilty in the Cape High Court on Thursday and received a R3m fine and a four-year suspended sentence.

Five years ago, he would not have been able to negotiate his own sentence in this manner.

The sentence on Thatcher was "nothing more than a slap on the wrist", the African National Congress Youth League said. "This is indeed an abomination and a miscarriage of justice."

The Democratic Alliance has called the plea bargain an "elegant solution" while the SA Communist Party said it just reinforced the perception that the rich could buy their way out of justice.

SACP spokesperson Mazibuko Jara said: "There is a two-tier justice system, one for the rich and one for the poor."

Not only a tool for rich

However, legal experts say plea bargaining is not intended only as a tool for the rich.

Willie van Vuuren of the SA Law Reform Commission said anyone who had access to a lawyer to negotiate on his or her behalf could plead guilty in return for a reduced sentence.

This could involve a shorter prison term if the accused was not in a position to pay a fine, he said.

Research by Van Vuuren and others at the commission led to the introduction of plea-bargain legislation four years ago.

The intention of a plea bargain was to speed up court proceedings, at huge savings to the taxpayer.

Mia Swart, criminal law lecturer at Wits University, said she was surprised Thatcher was able to bargain his way out of jail in such a high-profile case, and believed it created a bad impression of plea bargaining.

However, P J Schwikkard of the University of Cape Town's criminal law department said plea bargaining was usually more to the State's advantage than the accused.

"The State will plea bargain when it is in the State's interest to do so."

She said that, in Thatcher's case, it was possibly difficult to prove his guilt, and it was in the prosecution's interest to get a guilty plea out of him by bargaining.

This was confirmed by prosecutor Anton Ackerman who said Thatcher had agreed to help the prosecution with all further investigations.

Van Vuuren said that, ultimately, the decision lay with the justice official whether to accept the plea bargain or not.

Due to appear again in February

Van Vuuren believed plea bargaining was achieving its aims in South Africa.

No one was willing to speculate on what sort of sentence Thatcher would have received if the trial had run its course.

Thatcher is to appear in court again in February, in a different, but related, case to decide whether he should be extradited to Equatorial Guinea to face charges of plotting to achieve a coup in the West African country.

- SAPA