Minister yet to respond to NPA dropping Pretoria hotel hostage case

Despite defence minister Thandi Modise’s initial stance of demanding that justice be served in the hostage case by the 52 “liberation struggle veterans”, she has yet to make an effort to get the case reinstated since the NPA withdrew it weeks ago.

The NPA withdrew charges against the 52 accused of kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap Modise, her deputy Thabang Makwetla, Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele and 25 other officials whom they allegedly held hostage at St George’s Hotel in Centurion last year.

Modise and the others were allegedly held hostage after a meeting to address the veterans’ grievances deadlocked when they refused to proceed without President Cyril Ramaphosa or Deputy President David Mabuza being present. A police special task force team had to rescue the officials.

Initially 53 were accused but one, Nonhlanhla Dlamini, passed away earlier in May this year.

Speaking to Rekord, the group’s lawyer Andries Nkome said weeks after the NPA’s decision, the minister’s lawyers had not yet served any documents arguing for the reinstatement of the case.

“We have not received any documents serving as notices from any lawyer of the government officials seeking to have the case reinstated in court,” Nkome said.

The NPA’s decision remains final in the absence of such notices.

Announcing the withdrawal of the case, NPA regional spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana had said: “After careful consideration of the contents of the docket and representations made by the defence, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the Gauteng Division: Pretoria decided to withdraw the charges against the war veterans.

“The state is of the view that there is no prima facie case (not enough evidence to warrant prosecution) because neither the identity [of the culprits] nor the individual acts committed by each individual accused can be proven.”

Mahanjana said what further complicated identification was that everyone on the scene, including hotel staff, were arrested.

“A process of elimination was then used to establish who were the attendees and or employees of the hotel and who the actual captors of the alleged hostage victims were.

“After that process, the police released some people before they even appeared in court. The accused now before the court cannot be linked to the offence for the reasons stated.”

She said some alleged hostages were reluctant to proceed with the case because they sympathised with the accused.

“In their statements, some indicated that they joined in the singing and dancing in the room together with the veterans. One witness said in his statement that there was never a hostile environment in the room. Witnesses were unable to identify who performed what act at the scene,” Mahanjana said.

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Speaking to the media after the case was opened Modise had said: “We will not tolerate deliberate acts of disregarding the rights of others because that is criminal, when the police came in there [hotel] they were not dealing with anything but the violation of other people’s rights”.

She said if the case were withdrawn it would not be by her department because “we do not want to set a precedence that you can commit any violation and the law would be put aside”.

Among the grievances the group had communicated was that they did not receive benefits due to them as military veterans.

But Modise said the reason some not receiving these benefits was because they were not recognised as military veterans hence had to await the outcome of a process to verify that they were members of the liberation struggle forces.

WATCH Modise’s briefing :

WATCH Gungubele explaining how the hostage situation unfolded:

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