State witness Sarah-Jane Trent was cross-examined by Mpofu on Wednesday.
Advocate Dali Mpofu, representing MK party MP Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, raised doubts about the credibility of the witness who laid criminal charges against his client in her terrorism-related trial stemming from the July 2021 unrest.
The trial, which began on Monday and is scheduled to run until 20 November, resumed on Wednesday in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) High Court in Durban.
Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former president Jacob Zuma, faces charges of incitement to commit terrorism and incitement to commit violence related to the July 2021 riots that claimed more than 300 lives and caused billions of rand in damage across KZN and Gauteng.
According to the state, Zuma-Sambudla – who has pleaded not guilty – allegedly used her social media account on X (formerly Twitter) to encourage violence and looting after her father’s imprisonment for contempt of a Constitutional Court (ConCourt) order.
Mpofu cross-examines state witness in Zuma-Sambudla trial
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Mpofu continued cross-examining state witness Sarah-Jane Trent, a fraud examiner from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Forensics for Justice, owned by well-known forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan.
He revealed that Trent had submitted two additional affidavits which, according to him, were not provided to the court.
The witness did not dispute this, stating that she did not know why the statements were not presented by the state.
Trent, who laid the criminal charges against Zuma-Sambudla, told the court earlier that she felt obliged to open a case because the MK party MP was a public figure, citing her political role and her father’s prominence.
Referring to one of the additional statements, Mpofu questioned whether Trent had filed the case as a private citizen or on behalf of her employer.
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Although Trent appeared uncertain at first, she confirmed that she laid the charges as a representative of Forensics for Justice.
“So the real complainant is the NGO?” Mpofu asked.
“It’s myself,” Trent responded.
After a brief silence from Mpofu, Judge Mbuzeni Mathenjwa intervened to seek clarification.
“I guess you could say a representative capacity,” Trent replied.
“You guess?” Mpofu retorted.
Mathenjwa stepped in again, reminding Trent that she had previously testified that her duties included opening cases on behalf of clients.
“It arised from that,” the judge remarked.
Trent elaborated: “If I can just clarify, there’s Paul O’Sullivan and associates where we have clients who come to us and that’s when we assist in opening the case.
“In Forensics for Justice, if we see something and we think we should open a case, then we’ll open the case. In this instance, I drafted the [statement], I signed it and we opened the case,” she said.
“Is it we or I who opened the case?” Mpofu pressed.
“The case was opened based on my statement,” Trent replied.
Dispute over fake accounts
Mpofu then referred to a section in Trent’s statement where she said that a claim by Zuma-Sambudla, that the “incitement” posts came from a fake X account, was “pertinently untrue”.
“Some of those tweets were from the fake account correct?” Mpofu asked.
“I can’t recall,” Trent answered.
Mpofu argued that Trent’s statement effectively accused Zuma-Sambudla of lying.
“Between the two of you, who was giving a false statement?” he asked.
Trent appeared puzzled by the question and sought to explain her understanding.
“You’re saying that there was a fake account that was posting certain things and that I am saying that it was her account that posted those things,” she said.
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“I never said anything like that,” Mpofu responded, accusing the witness of deliberately “dodging the question”.
“I am saying to you that you said at paragraph 8 that she has said her account is fake and if she says that it would be pertinently untrue, in other words false, so she would be lying, what’s difficult about that?” Mpofu remarked.
Once Trent acknowledged that she now understood, Mpofu referred to the earlier testimony of Major-General Gopaul Govender, head of the Hawks in Limpopo, who oversaw investigations into social media posts linked to the unrest.
“We’ll save time. If you don’t want to answer the question it’s fine but the point I really wanted to make was that Major-General Govender testified in this court there were indeed two fake accounts which claimed to be the accused’s account,” Mpofu said.
Watch the court proceedings below:
‘Wheat from the chaff’
After submitting Trent’s second affidavit — made three days after the first — as an exhibit, Mpofu asked whether she now accepted that a fake account existed.
“Correct,” Trent replied.
Mpofu explained that his line of questioning was not solely about the fake account, but about Trent’s failure to separate the “wheat from the chaff” – referring to authentic and false posts – when she filed the case.
“It was just a body of tweets, fake and genuine, all put together,” he said.
Trent maintained, however, that all the posts she had included came from one account.
The trial continues.
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