The Johannesburg High Court has ordered Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride and five of his metro police officers not to intimidate, harass or threaten three of their colleagues.
However, the court stopped short of ordering that they be kept 100m from the men.
The three have gone into hiding out of fear for their lives, the court was told on Wednesday.
This since the publication in a daily newspaper on Monday of excerpts of their statements to the National Prosecuting Authority about a car crash involving McBride in December.
Their counsel, Marne Strydom, told the court that Chief Superintendents Stanley Segathevan and Patrick Johnston and Superintendent Itumeleng Koko were ”living in terror”.
They were not answering their telephones and were considering abandoning their homes.
They had been threatened with murder, the rape of their wives and the killing of their children, starting on May 4, with threats as recently as last week.
Until Monday, these threats had been conditional on their not contradicting McBride in statements about the crash, the court heard.
Strydom asked the court to take into account that McBride and the other respondents ”have the necessary resources to make good on these threats”.
Segathevan, Johnston and Koko brought the application for a restraining order against McBride and 13 other metro police, but the court could find no grounds for action against eight of them.
The order eventually granted was drafted by counsel for both the metro policemen and McBride.
McBride’s counsel, Nazeer Cassim, accused counsel for the metro police of being ”selective” in the information it presented to the court.
He submitted that it was ”not true” that the contradictory versions first became known about on Monday, contending they had been ”out of the bag” by May 31 and that since then none of the alleged threats had been acted on.
He charged that counsel for the three metro policemen were acting unfairly in bringing the application — and in serving the notion of motion on Wednesday morning, giving the legal team only two hours to prepare.
An interdict was a ”public declaration” to a ”bad guy” that ”everyone knows of your ill-intent”, Cassim told the court. That ”doesn’t fit” in this case, he submitted.
”… They are using the courtroom in a public debate with the respondent … to perpetuate their grievance …,” he told the court, suggesting that the Labour Relations Act provided for a more appropriate forum for this.
He told the court that McBride and the other respondents were prepared to give an undertaking to the effect of the order sought by the three metro police.
It was this undertaking that was made an interim order of the court and which prohibits McBride and his six colleagues from ”directly or indirectly intimidating, harassing, threatening or acting in any manner which violates the peace or bodily integrity” of the three men.
The order, made by Justice Moroa Tsoka, gave counsel for McBride and the other respondents until July 24 to deliver answering affidavits.
It gave counsel for the three metro policemen until July 31 to deliver replying affidavits. Costs were reserved.
The five respondents named in the order alongside McBride were: Ash Budhoo, Trish Armstrong, Hennie Erasmus, Roelof Schoeman and Jacque van Wyk.
McBride has denied allegations that he was drunk at the time of the car crash and claims to remember nothing of the incident. At the time, metro police were accused of assaulting witnesses who tried to stop them removing McBride from the scene, and of trying to cover up for him. — Sapa