The testimonies of a telecommunications expert and two alleged drug mules will form the backbone of the state’s drug case against Sheryl Cwele, wife of Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele, and her associate Frank Nabolis, a Nigerian national.
Cwele faces, with her co-accused, one count of dealing in dangerous dependence-creating drugs or conspiring to do so, and two counts of incitement to dealing in dangerous dependence-creating drugs.
According to the witness list, the state will call on Telkom expert Dennis Tessendorf as it tries to connect the communications web between Cwele, Nabolis and Tessa Beetge, a South African national serving eight years in a São Paulo prison after being caught with 9,2kg of pure cocaine in that city’s airport in June 2008.
This was after Beetge was recruited by the two accused to smuggle drugs into South Africa, the state alleges in its indictment papers.
According to the papers, the prosecution contends that Cwele was in regular contact with both Nabolis and Beetge during the latter’s 2008 South American trip. This included Cwele “providing [Beetge] with flight details and instructions pertaining to her luggage” when she was to leave Bogota, Colombia, to return to South Africa via São Paulo.
Investigators in the case told the Mail & Guardian that they were optimistic about returning Beetge to South Africa to testify or, at the very least, getting her to testify on camera from Brazil.
In bail application papers filed earlier this week Cwele admits to email, telephone and text messages between herself, Nabolis and Beetge, but contends that these were out of “deep concern” for Beetge’s well-being. She also states that it was because of this concern and Nabolis’s inability to contact Beetge, rather than any conspiracy, that she became a “conduit pipe” for messages between the two. “Because I wanted Tessa to get out of a desperate situation I told Frank to send whatever he wanted communicated to Tessa to me so that I could forward it to Teesa [sic],” says Cwele in her affidavit.
The testimony of the second alleged drug mule, Charmaine Moss, also appears vital, with the state aiming to prove that Cwele had recruited her to work for Nabolis, allegedly with the knowledge that the job entailed smuggling drugs from Turkey.
At the time, Moss had refused to do so.
In her bail application Cwele, who is the director of health services at the Hibiscus Coast municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, states “categorically” that she “never knowingly participated in any drug trafficking, conspiracy or incitement to deal in drugs as set out in the indictment or at all”.