Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s fraud and theft trial was placed on hold once again on Thursday because her co-accused, Addy Moolman, had not yet recovered from injuries sustained in a car crash.
Pretoria regional magistrate Peet Johnson postponed the trial until Monday.
Madikizela-Mandela, president of the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL), sat in the front row of the public gallery along with her daughter Zinzi and bodyguards as she was told to reappear on that day.
Moolman, a broker, was injured in an accident near Jamestown in the Eastern Cape on Friday night.
The trial — which was postponed last October because Madikizela-Mandela’s broke a foot — was to resume at the beginning of this week, but the news of the accident prompted a delay until Thursday.
On Thursday, Moolman’s defence counsel, Francois Joubert handed in a medical certificate from St Dominic’s hospital in East London stating that his client would only be medically fit again by next Tuesday.
Moolman suffered from whiplash and multiple bruising. He was discharged from hospital on Wednesday, Joubert said. Jan Ferreira, for the State, requested a postponement until Monday in the hope that Moolman will have recovered sufficiently by then. The State plans to call only three more witnesses.
The trial started in July last year. Madikizela-Mandela and Moolman pleaded not guilty to 60 charges of fraud and 25 of theft involving an amount of R942 360. The State alleges that letters with the ANCWL letterhead, bearing Madikizela-Mandela’s signature, were used to fraudulently obtain loans from Saambou Bank in the names of bogus league employees, as well as Zinzi.
The theft charges relate to amounts of R360 which were deducted from loan applicants’ bank accounts for a funeral policy that allegedly did not exist. – Sapa