Lawyers for Sheryl Cwele, the wife of State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, on Thursday continued to punch as many holes as possible in the credibility of the state’s witnesses in her drug-trafficking trial.
Sheryl Cwele and co-accused Frank Nabolisa appeared in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on 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. The latter charge relates to the state’s attempt to prove that the duo had attempted to recruit Tessa Beetge and Charmaine Moss as drug mules in 2008.
Acting for Cwele, Mvuseni Ngubane cross-examined Hendrik Classen, boyfriend of Beetge, on Thursday. Beetge (34) is serving an eight-year sentence in a Brazilian jail for drug trafficking.
Ngubane suggested that Classen’s version of the events of May 14 2008 — the day both he and Beetge had allegedly held a meeting with Cwele — contradicted the previous day’s testimony by Beetge’s mother, Marie Swanepoel. She had testified that on May 14 she made hurried arrangements to get Beetge to Durban airport to fly via Johannesburg to England. That had followed a meeting she and her husband had had on May 12 with Cwele, at which Cwele had allayed her fears about Beetge travelling to London to assume an administrative job on a short-term contract.
Cross-examining Classen, Ngubane pointed out that the time at which Classen had claimed in a statement that he was meeting Beetge and Cwele coincided with the time when, according to Swanepoel’s testimony, the family had arrived at the airport to buy a plane ticket to Johannesburg for Beetge. Ngubane went on to say that the meeting between Classen, Beetge and Cwele was “particularly brief because both you and Tessa [Beetge] were drunk”.
“Negative,” responded Classen.
The defence attorney added that Classen — who testified that Cwele had offered him a job overseas — was a jealous boyfriend.
Ngubane’s attack on the credibility of state witnesses began earlier in the trial: on Tuesday, Moss cited “emotional trauma” as a medical excuse for being unable to return for further cross-examination. This was after Ngubane had given her what appeared to be a harrowing time in the witness stand on Monday, accusing her of fabricating her testimony that in May 2008 Cwele had offered her work as a beauty therapist for two weeks in Turkey.
Equally fabricated, Ngubane charged, was Moss’s testimony that she had not made it to Turkey because she had been scared off by a series of sinister events, including being housed by Nabolisa in a dodgy hotel in Yeoville, Johannesburg, and being assaulted by him.
Moss’s testimony was a “made-up story that you thought up here”, Ngubane said, after grilling her on why she had not reported the alleged assault to the police or the suspicious circumstances endured in Johannesburg for the week she spent there before her scheduled flight to Turkey. Moss had decided to “jump on the bandwagon” after reading about Beetge’s prison plight in local newspapers, Ngubane added.
During his cross-examination of Swanepoel on Wednesday, Ngubane suggested that, because of Swanepoel’s paranoia about her daughter working in Johannesburg, Nabolisa and Cwele had “hatched a plan to deceive you [Swanepoel] so that Tessa could work in Johannesburg, by telling you that she was going to London”.
Prosecutor Ian Cooke had, in calling Moss, Swanepoel and Classen, aimed to establish the modus operandi by which Cwele and Nabolisa allegedly recruited drug mules — that is, by preying on unemployed white people from small-town KwaZulu-Natal.
Cooke had also hoped to establish that Cwele’s behaviour had been sinister in not responding to calls from Swanepoel after the latter had learnt of her daughter’s incarceration, and in allegedly lying to her about Beetge’s whereabouts after she had left Durban, ostensibly for London.
The prosecution contends in its indictment that Cwele was in regular contact with both Nabolisa 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 Sao Paulo. At the time of going to press, investigating officer Colonel Izak Ludeke was about to take the witness stand and Cooke had submitted evidence, including emails between Beetge and Cwele, SMSs between the two and telephone records, indicating calls Cwele made to Beetge and Nabolisa.