Colonel Peter Mbobo was tried for and found guilty of a strange offence this week: setting aside his regular duties to help provide security backup for President Thabo Mbeki.
When there was no one else available to help secure medical supplies for Mbeki during the African National Congress’s national conference in 2002, Mbobo took responsibility.
As a result he was charged with 21 days AWOL, subsistence and travel fraud, backdating an order appointing an acting officer in his stead and a catch-all charge of “prejudicing military discipline” for the time he spent away from his normal duties.
When the military court convened at Cape Town’s Castle, however, it was shown letters of thanks from Mbobo’s superiors, following similar expressions by the presidential protection and medical units. These were crucial to his case, because they showed he had acted out of a sense of military duty.
The military trial heard that the surgeon-general had issued a general authorisation for support during the ANC conference, in reponse to an official request from the presidential protection and medical teams. Mbobo, as head of Western Cape military health services, stepped in when one of his team was unavailable because he had been deployed to Burundi.
On Monday Mbobo was found guilty on all charges in just a few minutes. He admitted negligence after consultations between the military prosecution and his defence advocate, Independent Democrats MP Cecil Burgess. He was sentenced to six months’ jail suspended for three years and fined R2 000.
But the case has raised questions about how military prosecutors decide whom to charge. Mbobo is a former Umkhonto weSizwe commander, and one body of opinion believes former non-statutory-force members are being targeted. A ministerial task team is reviewing military discipline, in part to decide whether cases should be heard by neutral presiding officers who are not bound by military hierarchy.
Senior military Judge Captain Louis Dunn focused on differences between those who commit fraud or abuse of state assets for self-enrichment and this case, where there was no personal gain. “Anyone who has been in the military for a while, at some or other time will have … committed a similar offence,” said Dunn, citing examples of taking a state car without the required paperwork for a urgent meeting or booking into a guest house during out-of-office duties when there is no military accommodation.
“You are doing this to do your job. [But] you can’t do that; there’s no military certificate …” he said.
Military courts were opened to the public and their proceedings revised under the 1999 Military Discipline Supplementary Measures Act, following a successful legal challenge by the M&G and the Freedom of Expression Institute.