It’s been a bad week for municipalities in the Eastern Cape, with public figures battered by fraud and sex scandals. Peter Dickson reportsThe mayor grabbed his assault rifle while the town secretary downloaded porn from the Internet and seven councillors drove home courtesy of their fake driver’s licences.
Sounds like a brave new world’s ultimate nightmare, but it was local government reality in the Eastern Cape last week in East London, Seymour and Fort Beaufort.
Court B in the Grahamstown High Court, presided over by the honourable Judge Eric Leach, is not the place one usually finds Internet porn. But that’s where a bizarre case of sexual harassment played itself out last week when Fort Beaufort town secretary Elfranco Britz faced a R112 000 claim by a former employee who alleges he harassed her for four months in 1995 before raping her.
In four days of explicit evidence, she told the court that while working at the Fort Beaufort municipality, she suffered four months of open-mouthed kisses against her will, forced physical contact and unsolicited petting. She was continually “rubbed up against” and touched, she said, and received love letters and explicit suggestions from her “large and forceful” boss.
Her wrists were often bruised from the force with which she was handled, she said, while her breast was once severely bruised.
Prior to the alleged rape at her home in August 1995 – while her husband was away – she claims Britz showed her pornographic material on his computer.
She, her husband and Fort Beaufort town clerk Johan Botha copied the computer disc as “evidence” and it was this – grainy colour prints of all manner of explicit sex from the website Electroporn – which shocked the court.
Britz, who is being sued for R30 000 for the alleged harassment and R82 000 for the alleged rape, denied the allegations but admitted touching and kissing his former secretary.
He said they were having “an affair”, she was a willing participant and he “never did anything” – including “having sex” with her – without her consent.
His counsel, advocate Ben Pretorius, said in his closing argument that the former secretary’s version was “highly unlikely”.
The evidence indicated an affair and consensual sex rather than sexual harassment and rape, he argued.
The woman wept quietly during the tea break after Pretorius’s argument and again when Judge Leach reserved judgment.
On the same day, further up the road in the Balfour district court and after a night in jail, Seymour mayor Michael Kota appeared on charges of illegally possessing a G3 assault rifle, car theft, housebreaking and escaping from custody.
Kota, in the dock with his brother Ntemi, his girlfriend and two friends, was not asked to plead. They were all remanded in custody at Whittlesea’s Sada prison.
The state alleges the group was arrested on the night of July 14 1994 after the car they were travelling in – reported stolen earlier in the evening – was stopped and searched by police. A G3 assault rifle was found in the car, and they were arrested and handcuffed.
That’s when the curious crowd which had gathered began stoning the police. They were forced to flee – without Kota and company, who escaped, still handcuffed.
The assault rifle was stolen on March 13 1994 from the home of a Ciskei Defence Force member while he was in hospital.
Police representative Captain Leon Els said the mayor and his co-accused were only re- arrested four years later because witnesses, initially “unco-operative”, had now come forward.
The mayor is no stranger to courtrooms. In July this year, an arson charge against him was dropped because of insufficient evidence. He and his brother Timothy had previously appeared in court on charges of aiming a gun at three people.
“Lack of evidence” is also bedevilling prosecutors down the road in East London, where 11 city councillors are being investigated for possessing false driver’s licences.
Investigating officer Inspector Johan van Jaarsveld says he is gathering statements and will open dockets against seven councillors – he is not yet able to name them – once he has all the information.
But documents and statements concerning another four councillors allegedly in possession of fake licences – Duncan Village councillor Sola Nodikana and Mdantsane councillors Joseph Nelani, George Msimang and Lwandile Dukashe – have already been submitted to the director of public prosecutions.
Charges against them were dropped because of “lack of information”. East London public prosecutor Andre Williams said there had not been enough evidence to merit prosecution.
Although he said he was not allowed to discuss the matter further, Williams said that once a decision on whether to prosecute was made by the director of public prosecutions, an investigation would be re-opened.