Hawks head may have ‘possibly’ received Mdluli docket, court hears

Will there ever be justice for Oupa Ramogibe?

This was the question asked by Ramogibe’s sister Mantle Jiyane, after proceedings had finalised for the day in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Friday.

“They came from nowhere and shot him while he was with the police, nobody has ever been arrested,” Jiyane claimed.

Ramogibe was in a civil marriage with Tshidi Buthelezi, who was simultaneously in a customary marriage with suspended South African Police Crime Intelligence head Lieutenant General Richard Mdluli.

“He died for love,” said an emotional Jiyane.

Mdluli was arrested for the crime in 2011, but the charge of murder was withdrawn by the National Prosecuting Authority.

Mdluli and Colonel Mthembeni Mthunzi face five counts of intimidation, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of assault with the intent to commit grievous bodily harm and one of defeating the ends of justice.

READ MORE: Mdluli tells court he’s a victim of an ‘officially sanctioned’ plot

Earlier, defence witness Brigadier Woolganathan “Biggs” Govender conceded it was possible he may have received a September 1998 docket accusing Mdluli of assault – which the State is claiming has disappeared.

Evidence so far has shown there is no record of the assault docket being registered in any of the plethora of official registers designed specifically for the recording of such, nor on the police’s computerised Crime Administration System (CAS).

The only record of the docket is a claim made by the complainant herself, Alice Manana, and a statement by a Constable Joseph Israel, which states that the docket was taken from him by his commander at the time, then Captain Govender.

Govender is now the head of the Hawks’ organised crime division in Gauteng. Manana was friends with Buthelezi.

 In January 1999, Manana claimed she was shot and wounded by persons unknown a month after she had allegedly opened the assault docket.

While no record of the 1998 assault exists, the attempted murder docket does and prosecutor advocate Deon Barnard hammered Govender on many contradictions in the docket.

It was the fact that the docket was signed off by Govender as undetected in less than 48 hours, despite there being forensic evidence as well as the fact that Govender had signed it off as undetected while it had been closed on the CAS system as withdrawn which drew Barnard’s attention.

Govender laid the blame for this at the feet of the clerk who would have done the actual computer work, but couldn’t explain why the clerk had his password to the CAS system.

The State is trying to make a link of Mdluli interfering in other dockets which were apparently closed with minimal investigation as well.

When Mdluli was arrested in 2011, he was kept at Boksburg police cells, where Govender was the station commander.

 The trial continues on Monday.

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