Kindness got Winnie in trouble

2004-06-21 14:34

Pretoria - Benevolence was behind the actions that led to former African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's fraud and theft conviction, the Pretoria High Court heard on Monday.

She had not been motivated by personal gain, but had sought to address a pressing social need, Advocate Ishmael Semenya argued in Madikizela-Mandela's criminal appeal.

"The context within which the activities occurred represents an attempt to... do a social good," he said.

Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of fraud in April last year for signing fraudulent letters to accompany 43 Saambou loan applications.

Semenya said she had been involved in efforts to help individuals who would not normally qualify for loans from the country's mainstream banks.

She maintained her innocence on the fraud counts, saying she had signed the 43 letters without knowing they contained misrepresentations. The letters fraudulently stated that the loan applicants were employed by the ANCWL.

Semenya asked the court, should it uphold the conviction, to replace Madikizela-Mandela's sentence with one of correctional supervision.

She was given an effective four-year sentence by the Pretoria regional court - eight months of which had to be served in prison and the rest as correctional supervision.

Semenya asked Judge Eberhardt Bertelsmann to keep in mind that his client was a great-grandmother. A jail sentence was therefore not appropriate.

He also argued there was no danger of Madikizela-Mandela repeating the offence.

Apart from the fraud charges, she was also convicted by the regional court on 25 counts of theft. Broker Addy Moolman was convicted of the same charges plus another 15 of fraud.

He was given an effective five-year prison sentence.

The theft charges pertain to amounts of R360 deducted from the Saambou loan applicants' bank accounts for a funeral policy the State said was not underwritten.

Unfair trial

Earlier in the day, Madikizela-Mandela claimed her conviction had been the result of an unfair trial.

Semenya argued that his client's constitutional rights had been infringed upon when the trial court turned down her application for further particulars on the charge sheet.

"It is virtually impossible to imagine the violation of such a fundamental right still yielding a fair trial," he said.

Semenya and Dup Du Plessis, for Moolman, both argued that the State had not made out its case on the fraud charges.

Semenya said the State had failed to show the causal link between the misrepresentations contained in the letters and the loans being granted. No evidence was led during the trial on how the applications were assessed and on what grounds they were granted.

Both maintained their innocence on the theft counts, with Moolman saying he had acted on Madikizela-Mandela's instructions.

- SAPA