Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Pietermaritzburg Regional Court this week dismissed a high-profile rape case against Johannesburg tycoon Jonty Sandler, who had been accused of assaulting a security guard at gunpoint in a Drakensberg hotel. Magistrate Fred de Beer threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence presented against Sandler in court this week boiled down only to “suspicions” and that the court could not rely on such “suspicions” to make a guilty finding. The magistrate said there was no prima facie case because of inconsistencies in the evidence. The ruling on Thursday afternoon followed a call by Sandler’s defence team to dismiss the case against the millionaire businessman because the state had failed to present a strong case. De Beer said that when he had driven to work on Thursday morning, he had wondered whether the defence would apply to have the case set aside because of the poor performance on the part of the prosecution.
Advocate Michael Hellens, who led Sandler’s defence team, told the court that the state’s case had been “filled with fundamental flaws and inconsistencies”. Sandler, who sat motionless in the dock this week, pondering a set of handwritten notes, had been charged with indecent assault and rape of a former security guard, Thomas Mvubu, stationed at the Himeville Arms hotel. Hellens said Mvubu’s version of how Sandler raped him at gunpoint last September was “flawed and unconvincing”.
Hellens also said the heart of the case, a gun, was not mentioned by Mvubu to the police. On Tuesday, Sandler scowled as the security guard told the court how he had cried when the businessman kissed him and forced him to have anal intercourse in a hotel room. “I did not like what he [Sandler] was doing to me,” said Mvubu, adding that he was bleeding from a tear on his penis after the incident and that he had handed to the police the money Sandler had paid him. Mvubu, who said he was a “mad person” after the rape ordeal and who has been unemployed since he was fired last December, also said he had escorted Sandler to room 6 at the hotel and that Sandler had asked him in for coffee. After turning on the kettle, Mvubu said, Sandler gave him a R100 note and then held him around his neck with one hand and with the other holding the gun to his head pushed him on to the bed, where he was undressed and raped. Mvubu’s version, Hellens said, “suggests that we are dealing with some kind of subterranean motives”. Hellens also added that it was highly “unlikely that Sandler, a businessman and a wealthy man, may want to have sexual intercourse with a strange rural young man from a sleepy town of Himeville without a condom”. “This would be plain suicidal,” Hellens said adding, “it was highly possible that the guard cooked up the embarrassing allegations against Sandler for reasons unknown to us. We must ask ourselves why within a day after the alleged incident Sandler was approached to pay R86E000 to quell the allegations.”
During the proceedings Sandler occasionally eyed the magistrate as his defence team launched an assault against the state’s key witnesses who had earlier testified against him.
Sandler’s defence said most state key witnesses, who this week struggled to remain calm and testified nervously,
presented “contradictory and flawed” evidence and statements.
Mvubu’s mother, Ester Duma, and his girlfriend, Happiness Mjaara, the defence said, presented a sequence of problems in their testimony. Hellens also led an assault against Duma’s version of how the rape incident was reported the police.
Hellens argued that Duma’s evidence in court contradicted her initial statement she made to the police shortly after the incident. “I am confused,” she said, adding that Hellens was “asking the same questions in a different ways”. Hellens said Sandler, who is the co-founder of the black empowerment group New Africa Investment (Nail), had been contacted by cellphone on the polo field at Himeville the morning after the alleged incident last September by security tycoon and owner of the Himeville Arms hotel, Norman Reeves. Reeves, Hellens said, told Sandler that the guard had spoken to his chief and that “they want to drop the matter but want payment of R86 000”. Sandler’s defence also said that the money was to be used to buy a house for Mvubu, who the defence critiqued for “credibility problems”.
In his testimony Mvubu denied having been offered R86 000, saying he was only offered R50E000 via the hotel manager, Johan Taljaard, to drop the charges. Taljaard confirmed the offer in his testimony. Investigating officer Inspector Suitbert Shezi also confirmed the R50 000 offer by Reeves, who has since been charged with defeating the ends of justice. Hellens also said the medical evidence presented to the court by district surgeon Grant Lindsay showed that there was no anal penetration, contrary to what Mvubu stated in his original statement.
Lindsay, who examined Mvubu, told the court on Wednesday that Mvubu was “agitated, tearful and obviously emotional” and that there were blood marks and “white stains” on the front of Mvubu’s shirt and in his underpants.
According to Lindsay the injury to the Mvubu’s foreskin was not consistent with a self-inflicted injury.
Sandler said he would comment on the ruling next week.