REPEAT OFFENDER
Hlophe whistleblower has history of ‘hit’ claims
● A prisoner who blew the whistle on an alleged plot to assassinate Western Cape deputy judge president Patricia Goliath has been accused of making allegations about assassination plots twice before.
When he was arrested in 2017 in the Eastern Cape, he was accused of having called a prominent businessman to claim that a hit had been taken out on him.
He is currently incarcerated in New Prison, Pietermaritzburg, awaiting trial on charges including falsely claiming to have key knowledge about the planned assassination of a KwaZulu-Natal politician in 2017.
The allegation that Western Cape judge president John Hlophe had taken out a hit on his deputy stunned the legal community when it emerged two weeks ago, after a preliminary report from the Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services (Jics) found its way into the media.
Hlophe vehemently denied the allegation and called for a judicial commission of inquiry to look into it.
In a statement on September 6, his attorney, Barnabas Xulu, said Hlophe had “never been involved in any actions that could remotely justify the defamatory and unfortunate insinuations in the report of the Jics”.
The Jics report, dated September 1, was received by the justice minister and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies, the minister’s spokesperson said a week later.
This week police in the Western Cape confirmed that the allegation is being investigated.
The report is clearly marked as preliminary and is based almost entirely on an interview with the inmate. The Sunday Times has not named the informant as it may put him in danger. Other details surrounding the case have been withheld for the same reason.
In the Jics report, which the Sunday Times has seen, the informant claims that towards the end of May he overheard the phone conversation of another inmate, planning a hit on Goliath.
The hit was — according to the inmate — being arranged by a member of the Hawks on behalf of Hlophe.
Three men were hired to execute the hit, said the informant, and Hlophe was going to pay R3m. The informant told the Jics investigators that the hit was ultimately called off, when it seemed to the judge president that someone had got wind of it. The would-be assassins were paid R200,000 each, he claimed.
The Jics report does not corroborate or verify the information he gave. It says it seemed the informant had no reason “on the surface” to lie and that he seemed to stick to his story despite it being rather complicated. The investigators visited the prison’s hospital unit to ascertain if the inmate had a history of mental illness, but found no information on this.
The report recommends that the information supplied by the informant be “further investigated and/or confirmed by external evidence”.
The report does not itself look for external evidence.
But it has emerged that, during a court appearance in 2018 after being arrested the previous year in the Eastern Cape, the informant reportedly made a similar claim.
It was reported in a local newspaper that he called the office of a leading businessman to warn him about a “hit” on him. Contacted this week, the businessman said the planned hit had turned out to be “a lie”.
According to the newspaper report, that appearance was a bail hearing and the case was postponed for trial a month later.
According to the informant, however, he was acquitted that very day in terms of section
[Hlophe has] never been involved in any actions that could remotely justify the defamatory insinuations in the report of the Jics Judge president’s attorney
174 of the Criminal Procedure Act — meaning the state’s case was so weak that, without even having to hear the side of the accused, the court rejected it.
The informant’s version is contained in a separate court application under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) that he later made to the Eastern Cape High Court, asking for the police docket on his 2017 arrest.
The application reveals another anomaly — the inmate purportedly deposed to an affidavit in the Eastern Cape for his Paia application when he was incarcerated in New Prison, Pietermaritzburg — but the Paia application was later withdrawn. The attorneys representing him at the time would not explain, only saying “the best person to talk to” would be him.
The informant now also faces charges of defeating the ends of justice and extortion, relating to a case in which he is accused of falsely claiming to have key knowledge about the planned assassination of a KwaZulu-Natal politician in 2017.
The matter is still before court.
His case file also reveals that he was sent for an assessment to see whether he had the mental capacity to stand trial. A district surgeon found that he did not need to be committed for observation, after finding no mental illness.
In response to questions, Jics spokesperson Emerantia Cupido said the inspectorate would not be issuing any comment on the matter.