MINISTER’S EX-WIFE OUT OF APPEALS
Sheryl Cwele sentenced to 20 years for drug deal
THIS IS the end of the line for convicted drug dealer Sheryl Cwele. She now has three days to report to Westville Prison as her appeal against her conviction was dismissed in the Supreme Court of Appeal yesterday.
The State had successfully argued for both Cwele and her accomplice Frank Nabolisa’s prison sentence to be increased from 12 years to 20 years.
Cwele, the ex-wife of State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, and Nabolisa were each jailed for 12 years by Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Piet Koen, who found that the two had recruited two women – Tessa Beetge and Charmaine Moss – to smuggle cocaine into SA.
Moss had testified that she had been approached by Cwele about a job opportunity, but had turned it down.
Beetge took the job and was arrested in June 2008 at Sao Paulo airport, Brazil, with 10kg of cocaine in her luggage. She is serving an eight-year sentence there.
Speaking after the judgment, advocate Adelaide Watt, co-counsel for the State, said they were “absolutely elated”. Watt felt the pair got the right sentence: “We were fighting for justice and this judgment makes our job feel fulfilled. It was a very good judgment. We knew that on the conviction we didn’t have a problem, but felt 50-50 about the sentence,” said Watt.
She confirmed that Cwele’s appeal process has been exhausted: “She cannot take the matter on appeal to the Constitutional Court, as her case did not deal with any constitutional issues.”
Appeal court President Lex Mpati, along with four judges, concurred that a term of 12 years imprisonment was a “disturbingly inappropriate” sentence.
Cwele, who is out on R100 000 bail, only appealed against her conviction, while Nabolisa, who has been in custody, appealed against both his conviction and sentence. Both chose not to testify during their trial in Pietermaritzburg.
Judge Mpati felt that Nabolisa’s appeal against his conviction should fail as Beetge was sent to South America by Nabolisa to collect cocaine and to bring it back to SA.
“That is the only reasonable infer- ence to be drawn from the totality of the proved facts,” read his judgment.
He said the same applied to Cwele’s case as she recruited Beetge and worked closely with Nabolisa in arranging Beetge’s return trip to SA. “She even assured Tessa that the delay in her travel arrangements was for her own good, an indication, in my view, that she had knowledge of the dangers associated with the trip.
“She knew that Tessa was required to bring back something which it is unlawful to possess. Tessa was thereafter arrested with cocaine in her possession. The inference is irresistible, therefore, that Sheryl knew that the unlawful substance that Tessa was required to bring back was in fact cocaine,” said the judge.
On sentencing, Judge Mpati said the provisions of the minimum sentence legislation, of 15 years imprisonment, would apply in this case as the total street value of the cocaine at the time was about R2 million.
The State had argued that there was nothing extraordinary about Cwele that called for a lesser sentence and that there were several aggravating circumstances that the trial court had overlooked. These were that:
Cwele would have learnt during her studies towards a nursing qualification, of the dangers associated with hard drugs.
She she put up a false version and shied away from cross-examination.
She had shown no remorse.