Two senior officials who have been implicated in corruption by the Jali commission disappeared overnight and were desperately being sought by Jali investigators this week.
Eastern Cape Commissioner of Correctional Services Raphapheng Mataka, who is implicated in five counts of fraud totalling R34 000, never appeared to hear the allegations against him in the Port Elizabeth High Court, despite two notices being served on him.
Advocate Vas Soni submitted to commission chairperson Judge Thabani Jali that Mataka’s silence was ”deafening”. In the first few weeks of hearings in the Eastern Cape Mataka was ”very helpful and always available on his cellphone”, he said, but now that the commission has turned the spotlight on Mataka himself, he has disappeared.
Soni, who led evidence that Mataka claimed R61 970 in motor vehicle expenses — more than double the amount he was entitled to — describes Mataka as a ”common thief”.
He said he would recommend that Mataka be dismissed from the department.
The work of the commission was further disrupted in Port Elizabeth after the disappearance of a police inspector who allegedly engaged in sex romps with her jailed lover, which apparently led to her pregnancy.
Attractive inspector Carmen van Rensburg was in court and was pointed out by prisoner Fezile Mbuqe as he testified how fellow prisoner, former policeman Godfrey Grootboom (32), was frequently smuggled out of the St Albans prison to visit her at home.
He said Grootboom boasted about his sexual romps, fathered Van Rensburg’s child and even showed fellow inmates the scans of the unborn child.
During the second day of testimony on this case Judge Jali ordered that Van Rensburg be subpoenaed to testify. Police detectives couldn’t find a trace of her at work or at home.
The session has been postponed until she has been found.
Soni warned that if he could prove that Van Rensburg was part of a conspiracy to smuggle Grootboom out of prison for short periods he would recommend that she be charged. The maximum sentence for such an offence is eight years.
Grootboom admitted to having had an affair with Van Rensburg since 1994, but said this stopped after his incarceration for car theft in 1999. He admitted to signing the home affairs documents indicating that he is the biological father of her child. This he said he did to help Van Rensburg, who needed ”a father” to fill out the form. — newzwise