BAAAAD JUDGMENT CALL

A bizarre case from a sheep-farming district of the Eastern Cape emphasises the problem with ‘Shaun the Sheep’ and his prosecuting authority

In time, when Shaun Abrahams, the much-pilloried national director of public prosecutions (NDPP), finally leaves office, we will all look back with wonder at what a sheep can do. We already know of Abrahams’s bizarre sense of priority crimes that require urgent and undivided attention — just contrast, for example, his determination to investigate and prosecute former finance minister Pravin Gordhan with his complete indifference to the gangsters running the country with the seeming connivance of the head of state.

Whether this is due to the supposed timidity that has led to his nickname — Shaun the Sheep — or because of other even less flattering personal attributes, is not clear. But a bizarre case from a sheepfarming district of the Eastern Cape emphasises the problem.

It’s the matter of the NDPP — yes, Abrahams — acting against a hapless small-time building subcontractor, Frans Absolon.

On August 26 2016 Absolon and his friend, Johann Fleurs, were driving in his bakkie between Cradock and Cookhouse when they came across an accident: a large truck carrying 432 sheep had overturned. Only 43 had survived.

Absolon and Fleurs stopped, joining police, traffic officers, ambulance crews, members of the SPCA and general gawkers. The owner of the sheep, Steynsburg farmer Frederick Bekker, soon arrived with a vet.

In a later affidavit, Bekker said his broker told him the dead sheep belonged to his insurance company and he could not give them to anyone, not even to the vulture sanctuary that had requested the carcasses. His focus was on capturing and removing the live animals, and it was in any case too dangerous to try to stop looters taking away the dead sheep.

Three hours later Absolon, who claimed Bekker gave him nine carcasses as thanks for his help at the crash site, headed home with the dead animals in his bakkie and shared them with Fleurs.

Just days later, the two men were arrested and charged for “possession of property for which they had no explanation”, though the charges were later withdrawn.

Within a couple of weeks Absolon’s bakkie was impounded on the authority of the NDPP as “integral to the commission of the crime” with which he was charged.

When the NDPP brought a later court application for the bakkie to be forfeited to the state, Absolon opposed the action.

Now Judge Elna Revelas has made her decision: a forfeiture order would be “arbitrary and a misdirection”. The NDPP must return the bakkie at once and pay Absolon’s legal costs.

The judge said she had to consider the question of proportionality. Even if Absolon did not have Bekker’s permission to take the dead sheep, and even if the dead animals in fact “belonged” either to Bekker or to his insurance company, there were other factors to consider.

Applying the wrong law

The law under which the NDPP wanted to confiscate the bakkie was intended to combat “organised crime, money laundering and criminal gang activities”, but nothing that Absolon did fell into these categories, Revelas said. There was no premeditation; he did not plan or “organise” the sheep-snatch in advance; and it was completely coincidental that he was on the scene at the time of the accident.

It is difficult to imagine what Bekker or the insurance company could have done with the dead sheep, she said, and there was no “proportionality” in the NDPP’S strategy. The bakkie was valued at about R90,000, for example, while “the value of the nine dead (but insured) sheep, which were in effect roadkill” was R13,000.

So there you see it: the NDPP in action, pulling out all the stops in a truly urgent, efficient and effective use of time and resources to combat the national scourge of seizing roadkill.

The NDPP has pulled out all the stops to combat the national scourge of seizing roadkill