Police minister wins big reduction in wrongful arrest court award
Police minister Bheki Cele appealed successfully against a high court order for him to pay R1m in damages to a woman wrongfully arrested and held for 12 days and subjected to xenophobic insults by police.
The department conceded it was responsible for the harm caused to Cynthia Khedama, but said the R1m award was too high, arguing successfully that the amount should be reduced. The full bench of the Pietermaritzburg high court agreed on Tuesday, and cut the amount to R350,000 with interest.
This comes after a massive R93m damages award against the minister earlier this month to underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, after SAPS members were involved in a major heist.
Khedama’s case dates back to 2011, when she was about to fly with her boss to Turkey from King Shaka International Airport in Durban.
Khedama, a sales manager, was approached by two police officers who took her to a room and questioned her for two hours. They interrogated her about her journey, its purpose and who she was going with.
They searched her and upended her suitcase and said she was going to be arrested, as a result of a warrant listing her name.
However, Khedama told them her ID had been stolen and was being used to commit fraud. She gave them the name of an officer who confirmed Khedama’s version but they still arrested her.
They used xenophobic slurs when referring to her boss, who was from Cameroon, and her boyfriend. She was taken to Tongaat Police Station, near the airport and kept for days in a cell. She was so traumatised she considered suicide. She was then transferred to Cape Town, where she got bail. In 2012, the police eventually dropped the case.
Khedama began suing the minister in 2013.
Initially, the department defended its officers’ action, saying there was a warrant with her ID number. However, in 2018, he and his department conceded it was wrong to have arrested her. In 2021, the matter went to trial to determine the amount the police had to pay.
In 2022, judge Graham Lopes awarded her R1m in damages for what she endured.
The minister appealed against the R1m amount, arguing the court had wrongfully calculated the amount. The police department said the judge’s award was “inflated”. The police did not deny what happened to Khedama, but said that it arose from a singular wrongful incident, not multiple.
On Tuesday, the full bench ruled in the minister’s favour. Judge president Thoba PoyoDlwati, writing for a unanimous full bench, said the purpose of a damages award “is not to enrich the aggrieved party but to award [her] compensation in the form of a consolation for [the injuries].”
She said judge Lopes erred when he used a “daily rate” (each day she was detained) rather than a globular one for the initial arrest and detention.
Looking at similar cases, she found that the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Appeal had awarded R500,000 when people were wrongfully arrested and detained, sometimes for up to 13 months. She therefore lowered the amount to R350,000, but said there would be interest to add to that.
The interest would run from the date of Lopes’ judgment in January 2022 until final payment, which may end up at about R500,000. She also ordered the parties to pay their own costs.