Staff Reporter.
The Pretoria high court has set aside Norma Mngoma’s arrest and found the decision to confiscate her cellphones and laptops was unlawful, saying the Hawks had acted “with malice”.
Judge Cassin Sardiwalla ordered that the decision by the Hawks to apply for her warrant of arrest and the execution of the arrest was unlawful.
He further ordered that the confiscation of her electronic gadgets was unlawful and the Hawks are ordered to return all the information which they unlawfully removed and downloaded from her electronic equipment.
The Hawks must also foot the bill for her urgent application to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, which resulted in this order.
She is due to appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Friday in her criminal trial. It is not clear at this stage how this order will impact on her criminal trial.
Mngoma claimed that her arrest and subsequent prosecution was unlawful.
In court papers Mngoma had filed in the Pretoria high court, she said the arrest was just a pretext: “The entire arrest was an orchestrated scheme to intimidate me, to bully me and ultimately to gain unlawful access to my gadgets, to delete specific information and to violate my privacy.”
“The purpose for the deletion is completely nefarious, unlawful and potentially constitutes a criminal offence. That it has been perpetrated in conjunction with the Hawks is totally unconscionable.”
She was arrested at the end of July at the Waterkloof home she shared with her former minister husband, Malusi Gigaba, following claims that she, among others, had damaged a luxury car by scratching it.
Her gadgets, such as cellphones, a laptop and other devices, were confiscated by members of the Hawks. While they had handed the devices back, it was claimed they had downloaded personal information contained on the devices.
She was detained overnight in a police cell before she was granted R5 000 bail. She subsequently appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on criminal charges.