Pretoria advocate Cezanne Visser had admitted to committing sexually explicit deeds with her then lover Dirk Prinsloo in front of two girls in 2002, the Pretoria High Court heard on Friday. Children’s home manager Martie Booyse told the court Visser had admitted to allegations levelled by the two girls.

An 11-year-old girl was allegedly made to watch acts of oral and simulated sex while spending a weekend with two Pretoria advocates in 2002, the city’s high court heard on Thursday. The girl was allegedly taken into a bathroom by the pair, where Cezanne Visser undressed and told the child to touch her breasts, according to a caregiver at the children’s home the girl attended.

A witness in the sex-crimes trial of two Pretoria advocates was accused in the city’s high court on Wednesday of helping to ”build” a case against the pair. Social worker Marlene Malan was unable to explain why a claim that Cezanne Visser had asked an 11-year-old girl to touch her then-partner Dirk Prinsloo’s private parts came to light months after the initial complaint.

The state was in the dock on Monday for not seeking a prison sentence for convicted fraudster Tony Yengeni and other corrupt public officials. Pointing out that public corruption has become rife, two Pretoria High Court judges said it might be time to start imposing deterrent sentences.

The credibility of Tony Yengeni’s claim that former prosecutions head Bulelani Ngcuka promised him a R5 000 fine in exchange for pleading guilty to fraud was questioned in the Pretoria High Court on Monday. Had such an agreement existed, one would have expected Yengeni to protest immediately at his prison sentence, one of the judges stated.

Friday’s Constitutional Court judgement on medicine-pricing regulations should be interpreted as a victory for the Department of Health and citizens, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said. ”The judgement cannot be interpreted to say the department was wrong,” she told reporters in Pretoria. The court, she said, merely identified ”a few minor defects” in the regulations.

Former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni’s appeal against a fraud conviction and four-year sentence is to be heard in the Pretoria High Court on Monday. Yengeni is to contest the verdict on the grounds that he was deceived into pleading guilty by former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

Pharmacists billing fridges and television sets to the medical-aid accounts of prison staff are among the types of fraud uncovered in the Department of Correctional Services in recent years. The department saved about R500-million in medical-aid claims in the 2004/05 financial year by clamping down on fraud and corruption.