Modise did not show contempt of court finding —
The arrest warrant issued against National Assembly speaker Thandi Modise was cancelled yesterday after the Potchefstroom regional court found she did not show contempt of court by failing to appear for her animal cruelty trial.
Modise had said she could not make it to court on March 24 because of a scheduled urgent meeting between herself, President Cyril Ramaphosa, and the office of the chief justice, a week before SA went into the Covid-19 lockdown.
The court issued a suspended arrest warrant against her when she did not appear.
Magistrate Ben Mtebele postponed the animal cruelty case yesterday until December 1, after admitting that he was initially “furious” when Modise failed to appear, and had even contemplated calling Ramaphosa to ask him if he had ordered her not to attend.
After hearing Modise’s testimony that she was not seeking to disrespect the court, Mtebele said he “decided to give her the benefit of the doubt”, saying, “So I am exempting you from being contemptuous.”
Modise faces charges linked to the discovery of the carcasses of more than 50 pigs and other animals on her farm in Modderfontein, in the North West, in 2014.
At the time, media reports claimed that the pigs had been so badly starved they had eaten each other.
Advocate Gerrie Nel, for Afrikaans lobby group AfriForum, had cross-examined Modise earlier over her not attending the March 24 trial date.
“Did you tell the president that you could not be there on the 24th?” Nel asked.
“I did not,” Modise said. Why not?” Nel asked. She replied: “Maybe I was naive, but I thought in a country where lives are going to be lost, it would be understood that a president who has a matter that is burning, that is of national importance, would be given the respect to be listened to by the heads of the arms of state.”
Her lawyers had written to AfriForum to ask that she not be required to attend that hearing, without success.
The speaker denied any suggestion that she had not attended the hearing because she thought she was “more important” than ordinary South Africans and did not respect the courts.
“I meant no disrespect at all ... I don’t regard myself as any better than anyone else. I would not do anything that would put the constitution and the laws of this country at risk,” Modise testified.
But Nel was unconvinced. He pointed out that her lawyers had asked that she be excused from attending the
March 24 meeting before the request for the meeting with Ramaphosa was sent.
Modise said there had been discussions about the mooted meeting, which was initially scheduled for March 23, before it was finalised.
Nel then stated that Modise had also not mentioned this meeting in an unsigned statement her lawyers had sent to AfriForum, as part of their request that she not be required to attend the March 24 court date.
He suggested that she used this meeting as an excuse “after the fact” to explain her absence from court.
Nel accused Modise of deliberately not telling Ramaphosa about her March 24 appearance because she knew that he would have instructed her to attend the hearing — had he known about it.
“This is a deliberate disrespect of the court because you had more important things to do,” Nel said.
“That’s not true,” she said. During questioning by her advocate, Dali Mpofu, Modise stressed that she was not trying to avoid her private prosecution trial by AfriForum for animal cruelty and wanted to finalise the case as soon as possible.
“The whole story about what has happened must come out,” she said, after stating that “this case has been hanging around my neck and the neck of my family for years”.
The speaker had earlier testified that she had “not expected” there to be any opposition from AfriForum, which is pursuing a private prosecution on behalf of the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), to her non-appearance on March 24, given “what SA was going through at the time”.
“It would have been impossible for me to be here ... it was not practical.”