MORNING Yoga in a prison cell catapults me out of E-Section, the door literally unlocks itself as I am led away by a burly Afrikaner warden, only too pleased to see me. I am once again processed for the transport to Caledon Square, the holding cells at the Magistrates Courts, in which one is lucky to survive the gangs, the coming and going.
This story is a continuation from Part One.
The rotation from holding cell to court-room and back to holding cell takes hours. I notice an obviously Cape Malay Muslim, who is reciting the Shahada, he later tells me he stole some tools and has been charged with theft. After some mutual ‘Salaam’s Alaikum’s’ he disappears with an officer.
There is a young fellow who is passing messages from other inmates to his girlfriend above the cells, she can hear him if she bends down with her ear to the grill that buts out of the dungeon at pavement level. It is like listening to birds cooing back and forth.
Eventually I am called. Surprised to find my father Derrick has arrived to post bail.
After bail had been posted, SAPS took me and placed me in a room with one of the numbers gangsters. The gangster looks at me then says: ‘I believe in you.’
More mind games by the constabulary. Do they believe the story?
At some point during my custody in Caledon Square, during the switch from jail cell to holding cell, past a collection of lost boys, beneath the bloodstained Magistrates Courts, shortly after the assault, I was confronted with a brown folder, by a detective. Why did I do it, what did I do? Apparently there is a file linking me to an organization called Poqo, the armed wing of the Pan African Congress. God only knows why they believe this is important.
I am questioned repeatedly about my being Jewish. I refuse to speak to the Dutchman, he has no right to my views on the late Rissik Haribhai “Barney” Desai.
The SAPS processing of their ‘terror haul’ proceeds like an industrial machine, I am bundled into a SAPS wagon and taken up Buitenkant St, to see the state surgeon, who questions me on my competency to stand trial. Is the system even competent to ask such questions following their orchestrated assault? The entire system is build upon centuries of psychiatric oppression that created a nuthouse called apartheid run by doctors like Dr Verwoerd.
I am driven home in complete silence.
The Preliminary Hearing
Some weeks pass. I return to the Magistrates court.
Jennings explains to me in the hallway, there must be some kind of blunder. It is as though I have fallen into a parallel universe, one in which it is illegal to be Jewish. My identity is triggering for some people? An over-eager receptionist who overheard snippets of conversation, has pressed a panic button and the staff are covering for her?
I am not asked to plead. Instead there is a preliminary hearing in which Zulpha Khan is called, along with her witness the receptionist, who is unable to corroborate her story.
Jennings asks Zulpha. In your first statement you mention he was brandishing bombs, in your second you say guns. Zulpha where were the bombs?
Zulpha is at a loss to explain her own statements. Admits in court, there was no such incident.
There are now three separate conflicting statements, a literal Rashomon story: Bombs, guns, no bombs, no guns.
Judge Phindi Norman looks directly at me. Well, in that case, Mr Lewis is free to go. If my legal insurance would pay for civil matters I would file a case of wrongful arrest, but here we are in a building that smells like Harpic drain-cleaner.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally ‘conflicting cognitions’. A person with the view that national reconciliation is a foregone conclusion, is confronted with facts that are quite the opposite. A TRC-related case is suddenly converted into an episode of histrionics, exacerbated by a partisan press that is playing from its own hymn book? One’s reaction can either be rational (what is objective) or irrational (subjective) like stone the devil, burn the witch, crucify the Jew.
I later attend an event at Hiddingh Hall where Ronald Suresh Roberts and Ed Young are lecturing on art history.
The press meanwhile are going to town about my hair, or lack thereof, and repeating their baldfaced lies. Operating under an assumption there must be substance to the allegations made by their angel oracle. Why bother with evidence? A court-room reporter supplied by the same people indicted by my case are not exactly free from bias.
Aftermath
The orchestra is delivering its own sheet music.
Accordingly:
‘A botched charge sheet on Friday led to the acquittal of a journalist who in May allegedly threatened to blow up the Cape Town premises of Radio Heart if his grievances were not aired.
‘David Robert Lewis (39) appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court before magistrate Phindi Norman, who said she would give a proper judgement later if required.
‘Lewis’s hearing was a sequel to an incident on May 24, when he entered Radio Heart’s premises in a highly agitated state and demanded to speak to the news editor.
‘In an affidavit to his attorney, Mike Jennings, Lewis said a story he had written about a black musician (not involving Radio Heart) had been rejected due to alleged racism. This had caused him to file a case alleging discrimination with the Labour Court.
‘He said he had wanted to speak to Radio Heart’s news editor about the Labour Court case, but ended up with news anchor Zulpha Khan, who had refused to go on air with his story.
‘The charge sheet in the case initially alleged assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, but was later changed to alleged ”assault by threat”. Lawyers who did not want to be named said the charge should have alleged intimidation.
‘Norman said the charge sheet as it stood alleged that Lewis had assaulted Khan by threatening to ”blow up everything and the place”.
‘However, Khan’s version was that Lewis had said he would ”blow the place up with machine guns”.
‘Norman said the testimony of Khan, the alleged victim, did not support the charge that Lewis had threatened to blow up ”everything and the place”.
‘He agreed with Jennings that whatever Lewis had said, it could not have created an immediate danger, and that for this reason there was no case for Lewis to meet.
‘When the police arrived, Khan had in fact told them that she was not even certain whether she had wanted to lay a charge, Norman said.
If Khan wasn’t certain that she wanted to lay a charge, why did she proceed to lie? The crime of perjury is a serious crime of ‘intentionally making false statements under oath or affirmation in a legal or official proceeding, whether spoken or written, with the goal to mislead the court or authority.’
Meanwhile the Khayalitsha gang had bonded like brothers, with Thabo and Company attending the Suresh Roberts after-party as if they’re VIPs.
A week later I am walking down Woodstock Main Rd, and they are literally behind me. The one says: So where we going? The other replies, is he still doing yoga?
SEE: Why bother with law when you can simply capture the justice system?
SEE: Most of all I am offended as a secularist.
SEE: Did Ton Voslo just wake up to the fact that his company continues to mock the TRC Report.