Cop vs cop in slander spat
Xolani
Mbanjwa@City_Press2 June 2013 10:00
Head of the forensic
science laboratory sues junior officers and demands they retract their
statement he is to blame for acts of corruption.
One of the country’s top
cops has sued three lower-ranking police officers for defamation after they
blew the whistle on alleged corruption and mismanagement on his watch.
Lieutenant General Johannes
Phahlane is the head of the police’s forensic science laboratory.
Phahlane is also suing the
Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) and is demanding a written
apology.
In papers filed in the North
Gauteng High Court, Phahlane demands that Popcru’s Gauteng secretary, Matsemela
Matsemela, and the three officers – identified only as Lieutenant Colonel
Ramalobe, Warrant Officer Malatjie and Warrant Officer Ramalepe – retract their
statement that he is to blame for acts of corruption at the lab.
Popcru has rejected
Phahlane’s lawsuit as a “cheap publicity-seeking stunt that will not win in
court”.
The police lab deals with
fingerprint, document, ballistics and physical evidence.
Phahlane’s lawyer, Mervyn
Dendy, told City Press that Matsemela and the three officers, who work at the
lab, “defamed” Phahlane.
They also “injured his
reputation” when they held a press conference last September and called for
National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega to axe him within seven days, Dendy
said.
At that press conference,
Popcru claimed the trio was slapped with disciplinary charges soon after the
union delivered a damning dossier about the lab to Parliament’s police
portfolio committee and Phiyega.
In the dossier, Popcru and
the whistle-blowers claimed that widespread corruption, nepotism and theft were
behind the massive backlogs at the lab – and placed the blame squarely at
Phahlane’s door.
The union alleged that:
» Phahlane ignored evidence
presented to him about parts of a R46 million DNA database machine allegedly
being illegally sold for scrap;
» Ignored evidence about
the alleged theft of drugs worth R500 million confiscated as evidence from
various crime scenes; and
» Did not act on
allegations of sexual harassment and sabotage of criminal cases by members of
his division.
In his summons, Phahlane
labels as “false” allegations in the dossier that claimed the lab had a backlog
of more than
5 000 cases.
Phahlane maintains that
when the dossier was drafted, the lab had a backlog of only 182 cases.
He blames Ramalobe entirely
for the backlog and accuses him of sabotaging evidence analysis.
Phahlane says in his
application the allegation of sabotage relates to the lab’s response to a
request by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
The NPA asked the lab to
fast-track an analytic report into a fraud investigation of a bogus doctor in
Soshanguve, Phahlane says in court papers.
Ramalobe claimed that the
lab sabotaged the case and acted in a corrupt manner when it claimed there was
a shortage of senior analysts to investigate the fraud case.
But Phahlane says Ramalobe
failed to “timeously” inform the lab’s management about the urgency of the
NPA’s request and “instead utilised this matter as a source of a complaint to
Popcru, knowing that Popcru would, or might, as a reasonable possibility,
publish this allegation”.
“I am instructed that
Lieutenant Colonel Ramalobe was the source of the allegations as to the
sabotage of services and the person responsible for the so-called sabotage,”
said Dendy.
Phahlane has also denied
the union’s claims that he promoted a female colonel to brigadier within six
months because he had a “personal relationship” with her.
He has rejected accusations
by Popcru and the other respondents that he was guilty of “doctoring” crime
statistics.
He also denies being guilty
of “dereliction of duty” for failing to institute disciplinary steps against an
official who allegedly stole a rhino horn and another who was accused of sexual
harassment.
Dendy told City Press they
were not planning to sue any of the three newspapers that published the
allegations against his client because “I decide who I actually think is
culpable”.
Matsemela questioned why
Phahlane would target whistle-blowers. “Investigations based on our dossier are
continuing and Phahlane knows that. Why would he try and make a quick buck
before retirement?
“Our allegations have been
proven so far on the rhino horn thief who was sentenced and is at Pretoria
Central prison,” said Matsemela.
