A metro police officer witness in Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata’s drunken-driving trial said the owner of a Hurlingham property the judge crashed into called the judge a ”drunken kaffir”.
”There is a certain portion not on the tape where the owner says he is a drunken kaffir,” said metro officer Paulinah Mashilela in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
Mashilela said the words were not heard on a cellphone recording that property owner Richard Baird made on January 6 2007.
Earlier, Mashilela said Baird and Motata were verbally ”fighting” at the accident scene.
Also in court on Tuesday, Motata requested his defence team to have an affidavit of Mashilela over alleged threats made to her by the prosecution admitted into the record.
Magistrate Desmond Nair said he would admit the affidavit as a reference.
”It has no bearing on issues that need to be proved or disproved,” he said.
The director of the Johannesburg metro police department (JMPD) David Tembe, the chief of the JMPD Chris Ngcobo, as well as the Metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar attended the hearing.
Earlier, Nair said that the prosecution in the trial is to stay despite the threats they allegedly made against Mashilela.
Nair said prosecutors had a right to question witnesses if they deviated during cross-examination from any statements they had previously made.
”[A] prosecutor is a minister of truth, he or she is there not to persecute any individual but to assist the court in reaching a just conclusion,” said Nair.
On Monday Mashilela said she had been threatened that she would lose her job and spend many years in prison.
On Tuesday Nair said he had held an almost hour-long discussion with the defence, prosecution and Gauteng director of public prosecutions Charin de Beer about the matter.
He said De Beer was willing to talk with Mashilela about her concerns and see how to take the matter forward.
Nair said he would ”see to it that the proceedings are conducted in a fair, just and equitable manner”. — Sapa