Cops asked to lie in Yengeni case

Imagine this blatant deceit playing out so publicly overseas and what would be the consequent ramifications to officials. Not so in SA. It is a corrupt, murky world that ANC black elites inhabit.

Tony Yengeni you may recall, is the former ANC Chief Whip in parliament who was investigated by the former Scorpions and subsequently convicted in 2004 of fraud by accepting a discount on a luxury car during the tendering process for the controversial Arms Deal while he was also the member of a parliamentary committee reporting on the same deal. According to the BBC, EADS admitted that the company "helped" approximately 30 South African officials to obtain luxury vehicles.

Yengeni entered Pollsmoor Prison in August 2006 on the shoulders of cheering high-ranking ANC MPs and cabinet ministers, allowed to wile away his time on home-cooked food brought in by his wife, permitted weekend trips away from jail only to be released on "parole" in January 2007 a mere five months into a four-year sentence, the whole shameful fiasco finally ended (or so we thought).

His parole conditions state he may not leave the province without permission (he has, to a Celine Dion concert) and he may not imbibe any alcohol (he was photographed drinking at a braai). Each time the Dept of Corrections made excuses why these actions did not warrant the man being returned to prison. Clearly it's a case of preferential treatment for a well-heeled, well-connected ANC black elite member.

In November 2007, Yengeni was arrested by police in Goodwood on a charge of drink driving. Shortly after reports began to surface of a cover-up and the court is trying to determine the extent of the cover-up. Notice how the article refers to a Xhosa-speaking man trying to get Yengeni off the hook. The ANC is predominantly Xhosa ruled.

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The police constable who arrested former ANC Chief Whip Tony Yengeni for drunken driving told a court how under pressure from his commanding officer, he made a false statement changing the time of arrest.

“I was forced to change the statement, I was threatened to change the statement,”

The false statement gave the time of arrest three hours earlier than it actually was. An earlier arrest would have made the blood sample taken from Yengeni soon after the arrest useless as evidence against him.

Yengeni was arrested shortly after midnight on the night of November 25 last year, after Jafta saw him drive his BMW M5 repeatedly onto a traffic island in Voortrekker Street, Goodwood.

At the time, Yengeni was on no-alcohol parole following his conviction for fraud.

Jafta said the day after the arrest, Goodwood station commander Senior Superintendent Siphiwe Hewana stopped him in the police station’s parking lot.

“He told me my arrest, it’s like a frying pan, like cooking oil,” Jafta said.

“He told me that he would come back at 10pm and that there’s certain information in the dossier we must change.”

That night, Hewana called him and fellow-constable Jeremy Voskuil, who had been with Jafta at the time of the arrest, to his office.

“He told me to sit, and said the same thing, that the arrest was like a frying pan, cooking oil, hot.

“Superintendent Hewana asked me if I knew a person from Popcru (the police union), with a Xhosa name. I said I did not: I said, why? He said this person from Popcru was phoning him the whole day asking him what the race of the arresting officer was.”

Hewana also asked if he knew what Yengeni’s parole conditions were, and when Jafta said he did not, he said Yengeni was not allowed to consume alcohol, or be out of doors after 9pm.

“Superintendent Hewana said that, as a result, he had got instructions from the provincial office, from commissioners at the provincial office. He had got instructions that we must change the docket, the arrest time, from after 12 to nine o’clock.”

Hewana said he should put in his statement that he spent the three hours between the supposed 9pm arrest, and the time the blood sample was taken in the early hours of the next morning, driving around to various police stations looking for a breathalyser device.

Jafta said that when he protested, Hewana said he must not worry, and that the provincial office would “sort it out”.

“Superintendent Hewana said we must think about our families, we must think about ourselves, that they can transfer us immediately, and that the people at the provincial office were old Umkhonto weSizwe members.

“He also said that these people would do all in their power to prevent Mr Yengeni going back to jail. He also said that if Mr Yengeni went down, we would go down, too.”

Hewana had also said their promotion prospects would be affected if they did not co-operate.

Feeling threatened, Jafta said he and Voskuil wrote new statements to Hewana’s dictation, and he also opened a completely new case docket. He kept the old one, containing their original statements, in case the whole thing backfired. Subsequently, he made a clean breast of the plot.

Hewana has since been dismissed from the police. He is contesting the dismissal as an unfair labour practice. Constable Charles Jafta told the Goodwood Magistrate’s Court, where he was testifying in Yengeni’s drunken driving trial.