10
October 22
NEWS
2011
S AT U R D AY S TA R
Danger still lurks on notorious road
Fear there will be more fatalities on
Soweto street where five have died
Imprisoned for four
years – without a
trial or guilty verdict
MIRIAM MOKOENA
NONI MOKATI
HE
GOVERNMENT has yet to fulfil
its promise of upgrading a Soweto road on
which four school pupils and a
motorist have lost their lives.
Last June, former MEC for
Infrastructure and Development Faith Mazibuko announced that R2 million would
be set aside to lay pavements,
cut grass and erect steel barriers along Mdlalose Street in
Protea North.
Mazibuko made the announcement three months after a fatal accident involving
hip hop star Molemo “Jub Jub”
Maarohanye and his friend
Themba Tshabalala.
In March 2010, the two
were allegedly racing down the
street when they lost control of
their cars and ploughed into
Andile Mthombeni, Prince
Mohube, Mlungisi Cwayi and
Phomello Masemola, killing
them instantly. Fumani Mushwana and Frank Mlambo were
seriously injured.
The two face charges of
murder, attempted murder and
driving under the influence of
alcohol and drugs.
Last month, Moroka police
station
officer
Sibusiso
Mbango also died after his vehicle collided with a police van
on the road. The driver of the
van was charged with culpable
homicide.
Despite these accidents, little has been done to caution
motorists about speeding on
the deadly road.
“I’m anxious to see that
place fixed. We have many
learners from Protea Glen
walking along the narrow pavement. We’ve been raising this
issue through various channels
T
and have also raised it with the
Johannesburg Roads Agency
managing director,” said ward
councillor Walter Mahlatsi.
Mahlatsi said soon after
Maarohanye and Tshabalala’s
crash, residents had cut the
long grass and trimmed the
trees along the road themselves
to help prevent crashes and
robberies from happening.
“Putting up flashing lights
is not enough. Serious intervention is needed on Mdlalose,” he said.
Community
members
Mduduzi Malaza and Themba
Makhudu said they feared
walking along the road.
“It’s not safe any more.
Since the accident, I’m scared
of walking here. Motorists treat this route as if it’s a
race track,” Makhudu said.
He said a speed limit and
other traffic measures had to
be put in place before more people were killed.
Qodeni Mahlinza said
she was cautious when walking
along the overgrown pavements along the road as robberies were rife in the area.
Testifying in Maarohanye
and Tshabalala’s murder trial
recently, accident reconstruction expert Renier Balt alluded
to the dangers and said Mdlalose Street was in a good condition but that there were no
visible speed signs where the accused crashed into the children.
Joburg metro police spokeswoman Edna Mamonyane said
the department had not received any complaints about
speeding along the road or suggestions about deploying traffic
officers in the area.
Infrastructure and Development spokesman Philemon
Motshwaedi said the matter
had been referred to the Depart-
A YEAR DOWN THE LINE: The Government has not attended to safety issues on the Protea North Bridge in Soweto where
musician Jub Jub had a car accident that claimed four pupils.
PICTURE: ZIPHOZONKE LUSHABA
ment of Roads and Transport.
National chairman of the
Justice Project SA Howard
Dembovsky has in the meantime described the delay in upgrading the road as “a case of
fiddling while Rome burns”.
“Any type of road safety
strategy has got to include education, engineering, enforcement and evaluation or
else things will fail.
“Furthermore, JMPD likes
to pretend that the applications
for mobile speed camera authorisation are based on the instance of crashes and fatalities
on such roads. Why is it
that the JMPD, or other law
enforcement agencies, have
not sent applications to the National Director of Public Prosecutions for speed trapping
exercises on the road?
“If this is done, it will put to
bed the argument that speed
cameras save lives because
they don’t,” Dembovsky said.
He said it was sad that government and the some members of the public seemed to
have turned a blind eye to road
fatalities.
“When the accident occurred, we asked people to assist us in putting up speed
bumps but received little response. If they (traffic authorities)
know
that
four
children were killed, why are
they not deploying their traffic
officers in Mdlalose? If Chris
Ngcobo and his colleagues have
not told their people to conduct
road blocks on site, then it
means they have failed in their
mandate,” he said.
Contacted for comment, the
Department of Roads and
Transport, including the Johannesburg Roads Agency,
failed to reveal whether the
project was going ahead as announced by Mazibuko and
whether money was still available to upgrade the road.
THE LAGGING criminal justice system, especially when it
comes to detainees awaiting
trial, is having a devastating effect on a Soweto family since
their brother’s arrest four
years ago.
Mandla Motsitsi** has been
held at Johannesburg Prison
awaiting trial since 2007.
The main cause of the delays in Mandla’s case, his sister
Boitshepho said, was due to
missing transcripts and the
court having to wait for new
evidence.
On one occasion, the case
was postponed because there
was no water at the court building, and on another the family
had to find a lawyer that
charged less than the one they
were using.
During this time Mandla,
31, was waiting in prison, despite the fact that he had not
been found guilty.
He was arrested and
charged with robbery with aggravating circumstances for allegedly robbing a cellphone
shop at a Joburg mall.
His sister said police
claimed that they found the
keys of a getaway car in his
jacket. Mandla denied this.
They arrested Mandla and his
co-accused near the mall. They
later arrested the owner of the
car that was driven by Mandla
and the co-accused. The owner
of the car is out on bail but
Mandla and the other co-accused have not been so lucky.
Mandla’s lawyer, Leonard
Cibi, said the victim claimed
that Mandla’s co-accused was
carrying a gun during the
robbery.
The four years’ wait has
taken its toll on the family and
they have lost faith in the
justice system. The high legal
fees have plunged them into
debt. The family pay between
R4 500 and R5 000 for each court
appearance.
They tried using the services of Legal Aid South
Africa(LASA) but were not satisfied with LASA’s lawyers.
Mandla’s family rely on a
small business for income.
Boitshepho said she has been
blacklisted because she can’t
pay her accounts on top of all
the legal fees.
“I owe people thousands of
rands and I still need some
more money to pay lawyers.”
Mandla is due to appear in
court in December and the family is expected to raise R6 000
for a bail application.
Cibi believed there was a
good chance that bail would be
granted because of the long period Mandla has spent in
prison awaiting trial.
Mandla’s mother died last
year from a heart attack
brought on by all the stress.
He was not allowed to attend
the funeral and his sister said
he blamed himself for her
death. Mandla did not receive
any counselling because awaiting trial prisoners generally do
not have such benefits.
When he gets sick, it’s up to
the family to provide the medication, Boitshepho said. This
is despite the Department of
Correction Services’ assurance
that it does provide proper
health care to inmates.
l The Correctional Services
Amendment Act states that
awaiting trial inmates must not
be in prison for more than two
years. If that does happen, the
case must be referred back to
court for review.
**Not his real first name.
l Miriam Mokoena works at
the Wits Justice Project which
investigates alleged miscarriages of justices.
The view that the dead in this country can wait for justice is not just illegal but unethical
CAROLYN RAPHAELY
FIVE years ago today, Emmasdal
High School boy Leon Booysen, 14,
allegedly hanged himself in the Heidelberg police cells where he had
been held for the weekend on
charges of house-breaking.
But after repeated postponements, the teenager’s inquest has
been postponed yet again. His family still do not know if anyone can be
held responsible for his death, or if
he indeed took his own life. And if
he did commit suicide, why?
Sylvia Minies, the boy’s aunt who
brought Leon up as her own, expected magistrate Dawid de Bruin to
deliver his findings in August, but
the matter was postponed to October
12 and now to December 1.
The delays in the protracted proceedings in Leon’s case are apparently not unusual. The sad truth, as
one lawyer put it, is that “when
someone has died, no one is in a
rush! If it was a rape, the case would
be treated differently. When a person
is dead, an inquest will never get priority over a rape case, for example.
There’s no particular pressure in an
inquest. No one has to be tried, no
one is waiting in prison.”
“I’m starting to lose my senses
and getting angrier and angrier,”
Minies said. “These delays are disgraceful and unacceptable. I don’t
believe he hanged himself – he wasn’t that kind of child – and we really
need to know what happened.”
Ever since State pathologist Johannes Steenkamp, who conducted
the post mortem on the boy’s body at
the Germiston mortuary, told the
court that the cause of death was
consistent with hanging but that he
could not rule out the possibility of
suffocation, Minies has been waiting anxiously to hear whether De
Bruin will open a murder docket.
Initially, the autopsy report could
not be completed because the state
pathologist was waiting for a toxicology report.
This took three- and-a-half years
because of six to 10-year backlogs in
the state toxicology labs. The inquest hearing finally got off the
ground last November and has since
been beset by postponements, resulting from incomplete typed transcripts of court records and the unavailability of court dates.
“The truth is cases like this often
take longer. This is actually rela-
tively good timing,” said one person
close to the case.
Noted Wits law professor Bonita
Meyersfeld: “Both in terms of international and SA law, the State has a
duty to protect life and an obligation
to ensure that a person held in custody doesn’t hang himself.
‘‘All obligations become more
acute in the case of a minor… If
someone dies in custody, you’re
obliged to investigate and the
process has to be expeditious and
fast. Indefinite delays would be in
breach of both international and
constitutional obligations. For an inquest not to have been concluded
five years after a child’s death is incontrovertibly an undue delay. As
well as being unlawful, it is both
morally unacceptable and in violation of the law.”
l Carolyn Raphaely is a member of
the Wits Justice Project which
investigates alleged miscarriages
of justice.