In the words of the High Court (sitting as a review court) in Mbombela in Mpumalanga, this is “a bizarre case” (Afrikaans: ” ‘n bisarre saak”). It can best be described by reading the verbatim (word for word) judgment of the Mbombela review court, namely in paragraphs [1] to [6], where the review court remarked that –
“[1]. This is a bizarre case in which a man who did not stand trial or face any charge, found himself being convicted and sentenced by a court of law. How this came about would be difficult to explain as there is not even a proper record of proceedings that captured the events of 22 July 2022 at Nkomazi District Court held at Komatipoort. The presiding magistrate noted that the court recording machine was not operational that day. What is contained in the file falls short of long hand recording of the proceedings. The file content is referred to by the magistrate as ‘a record reconstructed from the notes’. There is no explanation as to why there was a need for the record to be reconstructed or who else took part in the reconstruction besides the magistrate herself.
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[This is only an extract of an article that is published in Servamus: October 2023. This article is available for purchase.]