The Cape Town High court has ordered the minister of police to pay a local politician R300 000 after he was wrongfully arrested.
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While attending his brother’s murder trial in the Cape Town high court in August 2014, Nceba Sandlana was arrested after the sister of the deceased – whose murder Sandlana’s brother was tried for – said that Sandlana had threatened her and that she feared for her safety. She reportedly told police that a friend had notified her of a video of her sitting in court was circulated on WhatsApp, and that Sandlana had shot the video.
Sandlana was subsequently charged with intimidation while he remained in custody at Pollsmoor Prison until August 2014.
TimesLive reports that both Sandlana and the woman lived in Gugulethu at the time, and that both were ‘aligned to different political parties and had a history of disagreement’. The woman could not provide the video, as ‘her friends were reluctant to get involved as they were scared of Sandlana’.
Details about Sandlana’s previous convictions and pending cases were verified in court the next day and, eight days later, he was released on R500 bail.
During his next court appearance, the case of intimidation was struck off the roll because the docket was not at court. As per the court documentation, no further prosecution ensued, and Sandlana issued summons for wrongful arrest and detention, as well as malicious prosecution, in 2016. The minister of police was cited as the first defendant, and the director of public prosecutions (DPP) as the second.
However, Sandlana abandoned his claim against the DPP for malicious prosecution, and only focused on his wrongful arrest.
In his testimony, Sandlana noted he ‘was kept in a filthy cell at Cape Town Central where he was in the company of a dozen drunks and a handful of hardened criminals.’ He added that while he was transported from the magistrate’s court to Pollsmoor in a large truck, along with several other people who were arrested, he was confronted by ‘a hardened gangster belonging to one of the notorious Numbers Gangs’, resulting in the loss of his shoes and belt even before he arrived at the prison.
He described his stay in Pollsmoor as crowded and cold, and that he was ‘fortunate to receive medication for treatment of his chronic asthmatic condition. Thereafter he was taken to a euphemistically termed sleeping cell where he would spend the next 7 days.
Sandlana was reportedly approached by another numbers gangster. ‘Evidently the members of the 26 Gang were sent by this self-appointed orderly to one part of the cell while members of the 28 Gang were sent to another part of the cell. When the plaintiff disavowed any gang affiliation he was directed to a different part of the cell where, he said, he once again shared a blanket and slept on the floor with other suspects who did not have gang affiliations either.
‘The cell was grossly overcrowded with 76 persons kept in a cell with only 20 beds. During the time he was incarcerated at Pollsmoor the plaintiff said he received 2 meals a day – one at 07h00 and another at 14h00. He was not permitted to exercise outside and was only briefly let out to make a phone call to friends. For a week therefore the plaintiff was crammed into a grossly over-crowded cell with no opportunity for exercise or proper sleep.’
‘It is clear that so many years after the event, the emotional scars of the plaintiff’s experience of this unlawful arrest still run deep,’ the judgement reads. Judge Patrick Gamble added that it was ‘common cause that any damages that the Court might award, should include the entire period of the plaintiff’s detention and that the first appearance before the magistrate (at which bail was not considered and whereafter he was detained by order of the court) did not constitute a novus actus interveniens which interrupted the causal chain following upon the initial unlawful arrest. In the result, I am satisfied that a damages award in the amount of R300 000 would be fair and reasonable to both parties.’
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