Jail time for court official

R10 000 bribe to make docket ‘disappear’

JUSTICE has been served on a court official who will spend five years behind bars for corruption and defeating the ends of justice.

Siyabulela Sono, who worked at the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court as a clerk, was sentenced at the Specialised Crime Court in Bellville on Wednesday.

He bribed Wendy Nombongo Ndude, who had been appearing in court for a charge of theft in December 2016. According to the court docket, Ndude’s case was postponed in 2017 and during this time she was approached by Sono.

He promised to give her the original police docket where she was charged for theft, and the case against her would disappear.

Sono asked Ndude for R10 000. She informed Sono that she was unemployed and did not have the funds, but would ask her family to help. She later gave him R5 000.

Sono promised to have a word with the prosecutor at Court 2 to make her fingerprints “disappear” from the system so that she could be employed without a criminal record. He assured her that he would get the original warrant of arrest and give it to her.

Another instruction from the accused was for Ndude to ignore her court date so that her matter would be postponed.

They then exchanged contact numbers and Sono again instructed Ndude not to attend her court hearings because he wanted the court to issue a warrant of arrest against her so that he could present her with both the warrant and the police docket at the same time.

After a few days, Ndude messaged Sono to find out when the next court date was. He duly informed her. Sono handed some documents, including the original charge sheet, to Ndude. He then told her to look at the documents when she got home and thereafter burn them.

However, she kept them. She kept attending court and was shocked when she was convicted in November last year because she had been promised by Sono that the docket would “disappear”.

Ndude informed him that she had been sentenced and demanded her money back. On December 1, she went back to the court with the dockets she was given by Sono and informed a correctional officer. When Sono found out the woman had outed him, he threatened to enlist the aid of sangomas to make the case against him “disappear”.

Ndude stood her ground. Sono promised to pay back the money in March 2018 when he got his bonus, but was arrested by the Hawks in January.