Justice ministry still to deliver justice
Senior officials who allegedly got a state worker wrongfully dismissed have remained in their jobs
Almost a decade after a clerk at the Viljoenskroon magistrate’s court was wrongfully dismissed, the individuals who allegedly colluded to get rid of him remain in their senior positions in the Free State’s justice department.
After Shadrack Mokatsane was reinstated, a Kroonstad magistrate’s court prosecutor is yet to decide whether to prosecute senior justice department officials Thembile Khuse and Riaan Swanepoel, who played a key role in his dismissal in 2014.
Mokatsane had worked at the magistrate’s court since 2006. He was in a steady relationship and supported his two children. That all changed when he was found guilty of stealingr700.
“I was defamed. You lose your dignity,” says Mokatsane, who, after being dismissed, could not provide for his family in the way he wanted to and subsequently descended into depression. “Why would I risk my job for R700?” he asks, saying he could easily have borrowed the money from his brother or mother.
Mokatsane faced a disciplinary hearing, whose initial finding was that the justice department “failed to prove on the balance of probabilities” that he had stolen the money.
Despite this, Mokatsane was dismissed on the basis of a second document that found him guilty of theft.
Mokatsane was unaware of the original document until a member of the National Education and Health Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) contacted him in 2016. The Nehawu member acted on allegations that senior officials in the justice department had amended the original document by changing the outcome of the hearing from not guilty to guilty.
Furthermore, there were allegations of “various instances where the labour relations office in Bloemfontein did not comply with fair labour practices in handling disciplinary proceedings of different employees”.
The Nehawu member also sent the allegations to the justice department, which launched an investigation into the claims in 2016. A forensic audit report was handed to former justice department director-general Vusi Madonsela in 2017.
The department recommended that Mokatsane be reinstated.
It also said a disciplinary hearing should be launched against the justice department’s regional head, Khuse, and the deputy director for labour relations, Swanepoel, and that they should “be banned from dealing with labour relations matters due to their noncompliance with fair labour practices”.
Only two recommendations were signed off by Madonsela — that a disciplinary hearing should be launched against Khuse and Swanepoel and that Mokatsane should be reinstated, which happened in 2019.
The justice department coughed up about R1.2-million in compensation for Mokatsane’s five years of unemployment. He received R500 000 before tax and the rest of the money was paid into a pension fund.
Mokatsane declined to discuss details of the disciplinary hearing pending against Khuse and Swanepoel.
The Mail & Guardian discovered that Mokatsane had lodged a criminal fraud case against Khuse and Swanepoel in October last year.
Free State police spokesperson Colonel Thandi Mbambo confirmed that the police in Viljoenskroon investigated the case.
“The case has since been sent to Kroonstad magistrate’s court for the decision of the senior prosecutor to prosecute or not,” he said, adding that “no arrest has been effected at this stage as [the] docket is still awaited from the court”.
The case is in its final stage of investigation by the National Prosecuting Authority.
In addition to the criminal case pending against Khuse and Swanepoel, the disciplinary hearing instituted against them as a result of the forensic audit report in 2017 is still underway.
The M&G reported in November 2018 that Khuse and Swanepoel were accused of tampering with the disciplinary hearing verdict of an employee who was accused of theft or, alternatively, that they should have known about the tampering.
Swanepoel faces four charges including gross dishonesty, negligence and collusion. Khuse faces five charges relating to three separate matters. In addition to tampering or knowledge of tampering, he allegedly failed to “prevent and detect unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure” incurred by the justice department when it paid the salary of an individual for two
years without the person providing services to the department in 2014.
Asked why Khuse and Swanepoel remain in their positions as regional head and deputy director respectively, the spokesperson for the justice department, Steve Mahlangu, offered a similar response to that given in 2018 — that the disciplinary hearings “are still in progress and not yet finalised”.
“There are different reasons which cause the delay in finalising these matters. Inter alia, both employees were hospitalised for a long period, Mr Swanepoel tested positive for
Covid-19, the regional offices (used as a venue for hearing[s]) were closed on several occasions due to Covid-19 cases,” he said.
Mahlangu reaffirmed that Khuse and Swanepoel “are charged with dishonesty in relation to influencing the chairperson in the matter of Mokatsane, to amend his verdict of not guilty to that of guilty”. But he couldn’t confirm when the hearings were scheduled to proceed.
Swanepoel said he was not allowed to speak to the media and Khuse had not responded to inquiries by the time of publication.