North West police take the long route to challenge General Mabula torture prosecution

That is exactly one year less than former President Jacob Zuma’s Long Walk To The Dock with regard to allegations of fraud and corruption in the Arms Deal matter.

Former Major General Jan Mabula and a team of detectives under his command in the North West were due to appear in the Johannesburg Regional Court on 6 October 2020 to finally face multiple charges of kidnapping and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

But the summonses were provisionally withdrawn by Gauteng director of public prosecutions (DPP), advocate Andrew Chauke, creating yet another delay in the long-running, politically charged matter.

This was to allow Mabula and his fellow accused to make a second set of representations to the NDPP as well as approach the North Gauteng High Court to apply for a permanent stay of charges, according to BDK Attorneys representing Mabula.

A first set of representations by Mabula to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in 2018 had been unsuccessful and the case was duly enrolled. 

On 6 October 2020, the day the North West team were due in the Johannesburg Regional Court, it was revealed that summonses had been provisionally withdrawn.

BDK Attorneys have since confirmed that the former deputy provincial commissioner of crime detection intends approaching the high court to seek a permanent stay of execution.

“The intention of our clients to proceed along these lines have been made clear and confirmed in writing in correspondence between the parties during the past two years,” noted BDK.

Mabula’s attorneys argued he would be prejudiced should he appear in a criminal court while this proposed application to stay the prosecution was due to be launched as per instruction by Mabula. 

As a result, said BDK, the summonses were provisionally withdrawn “by agreement”.

In a briefing to Parliament’s police committee in 2017, Robert McBride, then executive director of IPID, set out some of the details of the 2006 case implicating Mabula and how, in the early hours of the morning that year, a corpse had been brought to hospital.

“This person was alive just 24 hours prior when he was picked up from his home without any injuries. The doctor on duty refused to take the body because rigor mortis had already set in which meant he had been dead for two to three hours already,” McBride told the committee.

This person, he added, had been in the custody of Mabula and a post-mortem had shown the deceased’s injuries had included injuries “to the mouth, hands tied and death by asphyxiation – this was consistent with torture”.

McBride confirmed that a decision had been made to prosecute the case, “but it was struck off the roll”. 

McBride reminded committee members that the Mabula unit had been “used” to arrest advocate Gerrie Nel (previous prosecutor with the National Prosecuting Authority) and General Johan Booysen (former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head).

It was former Free State crime intelligence head, Major-General Agnes Makhele, who had authorised Mabula’s setting up of an operation in Gauteng to monitor IPID investigators who were probing former acting national police commissioner, Khomotso Phahlane. 

Makhele later faced charges of defeating the ends of justice, which were withdrawn.

In 2018 IPID successfully approached the North Gauteng High Court to interdict Mabula and his team from interfering with IPID investigations into Phahlane.

Phahlane was fired from SAPS in August 2020 and faces criminal charges relating to procurement fraud totalling R84-million and is linked to a “blue lights tender” for Gauteng police vehicles.

In March 2020, Mandlakayise Mahlangu, one of the IPID investigators in the Phahlane matter, was shot dead on his plot in Jakkalsdans, east of Tshwane, in an apparent robbery. Mahlangu was due to testify against Phahlane.

The Mabula case has stopped, started and stalled so many times since 2006 that Mabula himself has since retired and taken up gainful employment in the private sector.

In the meantime, former NDPP Nomgcobo Jiba is gone, disgraced. Shaun Abrahams is out of the range of media headlines and Shamila Batohi is now captaining a leaky, albeit still afloat, good Ship NPA.

Chauke is among NPA members named in a confidential report, known as the De Kock Report, compiled by advocate Rodney de Kock for Batohi on the Johan Booysen “Cato Manor” case and the complicity of senior NPA officials in that scandal.

Mabula and his team are accused of very serious crimes. As SAPS members they are implicated in kidnapping and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. 

Mabula’s lawyers have set out how in August 2018 they had approached Chauke and had set out “how damaging the mere fact that a matter enrolled against an accused person, could be to such a person, especially if, like in the current matter, such a person or persons are high-ranking police officers”.

“Inaccurate” reporting on the matter, Mabula’s lawyers argued, caused further damage to Mabula’s “public profile”.

Those who sought to prosecute him now “have their own private agenda to glorify themselves or use such enrolment to take revenge for perceived injustices against them”, said the lawyers.

Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan is cited as one such person whom BDK suggests is seeking to use the court for  “nefarious purposes”.

Read the letter from BDK Attorneys here: