The so-called ”People’s Poet” Mzwakhe Mbuli will on Thursday ask the Supreme Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction and 13-year sentence for robbing a Pretoria bank.
The man who performed at former president Nelson Mandela’s inauguration ceremony in 1994, claims he was framed for the crime because he had information on the involvement of senior government officials in drug dealing.
Mbuli and his bodyguards, Happy Skwabane and Ben Masiso, were arrested after the First National Bank (FNB) branch in Waverley was robbed of R15 000 in October 1997.
Driving a BMW, they were pulled over by police not far from the scene of the robbery. In the car, police found money in FNB bags, three firearms, blue overalls and a hand grenade.
They were convicted in the Pretoria Regional Court in August 1999, and sentenced to between 13 and 15 years in jail. Their appeal against the guilty verdict was dismissed by the Pretoria High Court on November 10, 2000.
The High Court found there had been no conspiracy to frame them, although the police investigation against them had been slovenly and badly conducted.
Mbuli claims he and the two other men travelled to Pretoria on the day of the robbery to get information about an earlier attempt on his life. When they arrived at an address given him by Masiso, an unknown person dropped a blue bag into the car.
Masiso then told him to drive off, Mbuli contends.
He claims he was driving around looking for the person who had dropped the bag, unaware of its contents, when the car was pulled over.
Mbuli’s initial lawyer in the appeal, Johannes Wilhelmus Wessels, was on May 9 found guilty by a disciplinary committee of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces for unprofessional, dishonourable or unworthy conduct for failing to prepare his
client’s appeal record. He was fined R3 000, suspended for five years.
Mbuli fired his lawyer after hearing last year that the appeal record had not yet been filed.
There are several letters on the record, urging the Supreme Court of Appeal to put his case on the court roll as soon as possible — including one from veteran politician Helen Suzman, and another from Mbuli’s London-based agent Gill Lloyd.
In her letter to the appeal court, Suzman described the delay in the hearing of the appeal as ”extraordinary”. – Sapa