A man staggering and groping like a blind man and swearing like a sailor. That was the picture painted of Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata by the state’s first witness at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
“The language from the judge was very colourful … there was lots of swearing,” said Richard James Baird, the state’s first witness and the owner of the Hurlingham, Johannesburg, home into which Motata allegedly crashed with his car.
“He was saying ‘fuck you’ repeatedly; he kept pointing at me and singling me out while I was standing in a group of people.” Baird said the judge also hurled racial slurs at him, saying: “Fuck the white guy.” This was said countless times.
The witness told the court that the judge was drunk during the early hours of January 6 when the incident occurred. “He couldn’t stand up without holding on to his car; he smelled of alcohol. The look in his eyes … they were swimming,” he said.
Baird, dressed in a casual pair of cream white pants and a blue shirt, said two more factors had led him to believe Motata was drunk. “His speech was drawn out, laboured, and his sentence construction was inadequate. The other thing that led me to believe he was drunk was the way he handled his vehicle.”
He said that the fact that Motata had crashed the back of his Jaguar into his home’s wall had indicated to him that he was drunk.
The witness told the court how he had taken pictures on his digital camera of Motata in the vehicle. He also made cellphone audio recordings of some of the abusive language after calling his lawyer from the scene, who in turn advised him to do so.
Baird also said that on the night of the incident, Motata displayed an amount of arrogance. “There was a point when one of the metro police literally went on his knees and begged him to cooperate, but he refused and they handcuffed him,” he said.
Motata’s legal team, of Marinus van Jaarveld Attorneys, and advocate Bantubonke Tokota let his junior, advocate Dannie Dorfling, take over the cross-examining of the witness.
Baird had earlier applied to the court to prevent his name from being published and photographs of him being taken, but his application was dismissed by magistrate Desmond Nair. Baird felt that his identity was “not anyway a benefit to the public domain”.
Motata, dressed in a lightly striped navy blue suit with a lime-green tie, pleaded not guilty to everything.
He is charged with driving under the influence of liquor or drugs and, alternatively, reckless and negligent driving. He is also charged with defeating the ends of justice, with an alternative charge of resisting arrest.
The trial will continue on Thursday morning at 9am.