UNEQUAL IN TH EYES OF THE LAW I am encouraged by the recent sentence dished out to Sizwe Shezi. Shezi was convicted of negligent and reckless driving and sentenced to three years imprisonment, half of which was suspended for five years. He had used a turning lane to overtake three cars at a busy intersection and then jumped the red light, in full view of two traffic officers.

When the traffic officers ordered him to stop and told him that they were arresting him, he said that they were wasting his time, and that they should just issue him with a fine.
He then drove off at high speed and the officers were unable to catch him.
He was arrested later that day.

As the judge said, it is high time that these individuals who show such a complete disregard for the law, are punished.

Lets hope that the officials who think that they are above the law will soon be punished in the same way.

After a braai at his parents’ home on Saturday night, Sarel Olivier and his 29-year-old wife Martie went to a pub in Kempton Park for a drink.
On their way home, probably intoxicated, Sarel took a wrong turn and pulled into a driveway and out again to make a u-turn, when a police van stopped in front of his car.

Two men in police uniforms allegedly then yanked open the door and threw Sarel into the back of the van without explanation.
Then one of them approached Martie and asked what she was prepared to give them in exchange for her husband’s release.
She gave him R400 that she had in her purse.

 

The policeman then got into the car and asked her ‘Do you really love your husband? Is there nothing more you can do?’
He drove their car in the direction of the police station, while the police van followed.

About 200m from the police station, the car pulled off the road.

When they arrived at the police station, the other policeman opened the back of the van and told Sarel ‘ You have been caught driving under the influence, but you are free to go.’

Shortly afterwards, his car arrived with his wife and the other policeman.

When Sarel got into his car, his wife told him that she had been raped.
Sarel flew into a rage, rushed into the police station and attacked the police officers with his bare fists.

When he went back outside his wife and his car were gone.

Martie said that two policemen got into the car with her when her husband went into the police station.
She lost consciousness when one of them slammed her head into the dashboard.
She said she came to on a lounge floor in an unfamiliar house. Her next recollection was of a security guard who woke her in a flowerbed at Boston Business College.

“He asked me why the police had dropped me off there. I couldn’t give him an answer,” she said.

After hours of searching, Olivier said he saw his wife in a traumatised condition walking from the Boston Business College at “exactly 07:20”.

She had been repeatedly raped.

Sarel said they were unable to lay a charge of rape later that day because the police refused to take their statements.

A charge of rape was eventually laid on Monday.

Kader Khan
Editor
info@yummie.co.za