By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@GalloImages.
The perjury trial of former Social Development Minister, Bathabile Dlamini, has been postponed until 9 March.
Dlamini was charged with perjury after a Constitutional Court judgment in 2018 in the wake of an inquiry into whether she should pay costs in her personal capacity for the social grants payments debacle.
One of the issues the inquiry — headed by retired Gauteng judge president Bernard Ngoepe — probed was whether Dlamini had appointed work streams of the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) to ensure Sassa could take over the payment of social grants from Cash Paymaster Services.
The ConCourt said the inquiry found that Dlamini appointed individuals to lead the parallel work streams and those individuals reported to her. The work streams were supposed to report to the Sassa executive committee, not to the minister.
Dlamini denied under oath during the inquiry that she appointed the work streams and that they reported to her.
This led to the Constitutional Court directing its registrar to forward its judgment and a copy of the Ngoepe report to the National Director of Public Prosecutions to determine whether to prosecute Dlamini for perjury.
In closing arguments before the Johannesburg magistrate’s court on Wednesday, prosecutor Jacob Serepo said Dlamini had taken an oath at the Ngoepe inquiry and promised to tell the truth.
Dlamini confirmed the contents of her statement to that inquiry.
“At the time she confirmed the correctness of the statement, which was unsigned, to be a true reflection of what she was saying. She confirmed this under oath.”
In that statement, Dlamini said it was not contractually required that the work stream leaders report directly to her and they did not do so.
Serepo said Dlamini decided against testifying during the trial to explain the lies that were allegedly told unknowingly. “Therefore, she is the only person to give this explanation. She could have taken the court into her confidence to say, ‘How I understood it was this and according to me I was not lying or it was just a mistake’. We do not have such evidence.”
Meanwhile, Dlamini’s attorney Tshepiso Mphahlane asked the court to conclude that his client did not intentionally lie during her testimony.
“If she made a false statement [then] she did not know that it was false because it is possible and it does happen,” he said.
Clearly even if I wanted to give the judgment there is no way. I will still need more time to consider the evidence before me as well as the arguments and submissions that were presented today,” Magistrate Betty Khumalo said.
Closing arguments wrapped up just a little earlier in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court. The state insists the ex-minister lied under oath and says she should be prosecuted.
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Video Courtesy of ENCA.