Dan Teffo. (Twitter)
I know him as Dan. He calls me JC. I blush when he does. I am no Messiah. Just a social worker with a strong sense of faith, trying to do my job. We have known one each other since 24 November last year when his attorney, Hartley Ngoate, negotiated for me to interview his client in the holding cells in the Johannesburg magistrate’s court, ahead of his bail hearing.
Dan had been arrested for the second time and had been in prison for five days. I had taken on the assignment from the whistleblower support group, which has members from the South African Police Service whom Dan had represented in defending themselves against retaliation for having blown the whistle on police corruption. (Patricia Mashale has had the highest profile but there are others whose identities are not known). Dr Marje Jobson, of the Khulumani Support Group, was particularly concerned about his children. His youngest child was only three and Marje was worried that she was highly traumatised after her father was arrested in his pyjamas on a previous occasion and kept under lock and key without a bail hearing for nine days.
Dan is a very active parent in raising his three children with his wife, Lerato. I am not going to go into the details of what the charges were, and what happened. It is sub judice and my version may be relevant if I am called to testify in his defence. All will be revealed when he appears in court on 27 May to answer whatever charges the state put before him — if the top management of the police service and colluding with prosecutors in the National Prosecuting Authority allow due process to flow.
The events last Thursday suggest they will stop at nothing to smother Dan Teffo.
So what really happened last Thursday?
I fetched Dan from where he was staying at 7.30am, and was charmed to see him emerge with his two boys aged seven and nine, smartly dressed in their school uniforms ready for school. Social workers’ first instinct is always to try to view reality through the eyes of those most vulnerable and disadvantaged, children especially.
From the very start of our relationship, Dan had accepted that whatever role I might play, I was first and foremost a social worker with a solemn obligation to veer toward whatever was in the best interests of the children — all children irrespective of who their parents may be. So with that prismatic perspective, Dan derived comfort from the knowledge that whatever further retaliation he might attract by his continual pokes at the bear in serving his clients, his children would not suffer for want of professional care and monitoring.
We arrived in Pretoria, parked in the basement of a building that one of his lawyer friends worked from, and walked to court across Church Square. A stranger stopped to greet him, and thank him for what he was doing.
Court resumed at 9.30am. The first alarm that some deflection strategy was being hatched was at the start of the day’s proceedings when the state prosecutor, George Baloyi, asked Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela if he could lodge a formal written objection to Dan’s line of cross-examination. The judge and Dan were taken aback.
“Why did you not object in the course of the cross-questioning?” the judge asked. “Why ambush us with a five-page written objection just when the cross-examination of your witness is about to end?”
Baloyi said he had raised objections during the process, but that Teffo persisted in an abrasive style, and that after a sleepless night he decided to make this intervention. It occurred to me that maybe Boloyi’s tactic was to deliberately not raise too many objections during the cross-examination, hoping that it would play out a rope that would eventually be long enough for Dan to hang himself.
It might have worked had the judge not ruled that it was only fair for the defence teams to be given a chance to respond to the ambush by also submitting a written reply to the objections, and that he would only rule on the matter after that had been done. The cross-examination continued.
When the court adjourned for lunch, Dan told me that a journalist had some important information to share with him. I thought it better to let them speak without my presence.
They returned after lunch with deeply furrowed brows. I could read the signs of much consternation when they hurried back into court. Something was afoot.
When the court rose at 2pm, his cross-examination of the state’s first witness, the forensic expert, was nearing completion.
Over three gruelling days, Dan had successfully established that whatever evidence had been found by the forensic expert, the fact that he had arrived at the scene nearly five hours after Senzo Meyiwa had been shot did not preclude the possibility that the scene had already been tampered with — with an agenda contrived at the meeting of top police officers who had arrived at the crime scene before the forensic investigator had been called to commence the collection of swabs, bullet fragments and a hat. Sergeant Thabo Mosia had testified that he was not aware that the only DNA found on the hat was that of a woman.
Plenty of reasons to be doubtful as to what was really going on seven and half years ago, which could explain why the case had taken so long to get to court.
Then with one police officer squirming in the witness stand, another police officer arrived at the court with a team. Noticing them before the witness could stand down, Dan’s attorney rose to urgently address the court to say that his counsel had been tipped off during the lunch that the police were intending to serve him with a warrant of arrest and that he could not continue, given the distressed state he was now in. He asked for an early adjournment.
The judge obliged and as soon as he had left the police approached Dan, in front of the accused, the witness and the rolling cameras, to show him a warrant of arrest for alleged contempt of court, for failing to appear in a matter in the Hillbrow magistrate’s court.
The police statement of clarification states: “According to the investigating officer, as soon as the court adjourned, the investigating officer approached the advocate who was making his way towards the court door. It is important to highlight that after informing the advocate of the execution of the warrant of arrest and informing him of his rights, the advocate went back into the courtroom.
“The investigating officer then followed him back inside the courtroom in a bid to ensure that the latter complied with the contents of the warrant of arrest. Advocate Teffo did not cooperate with the investigating officer, which warranted the call for the assistance of the Tactical Response Team (TRT) members who were already posted in the same court for escort duties.”
What advocate would leave his files and notes open on the podium and leave the courtroom? Why this draconian police action?
I managed to snatch a brief off the record conversation with one of the junior members of the TRT. Suffice to say the person was much dismayed too.
After Dan had been cuffed and led down into the dungeon below to be taken to the Hillbrow magistrate’s court, his attorney and I packed up his files and made sure they were safe.
My interview with the SABC’s Hasina Gori outside the court is only regrettable for the fact that I had not had a haircut beforehand. I was not planning to be interviewed, but a strong conviction was welling up that vanity should be set aside for the sake of justice. It is a statement from the heart.
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has since issued a statement that bears reflection, and has helped me sort out the jumbled thoughts in my head.
The glaring irony that now occurs to me is that while Dan stands accused of contempt of court, the police must now answer the charge of utter contempt of the entire judicial system and the very foundation for the functioning of a democratic society, the rule of law.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
[/membership]