An application to be enrolled as an attorney of the High Court by an armed robber – and endorsed by the Cape Law Society – fell foul of Judge Clive Plasket in the Eastern Cape High Court (Grahamstown), who found Ntsikeleo Mdyogolo’s three different accounts of the incident ‘at odds with the ethical probity expected of an attorney’, amounting ‘to a cynical attempt to mislead both the Law Society and the court’, reports Legalbrief.

Mdyogolo, who also has convictions for shoplifting and drunken driving, provided unlikely versions of the armed robbery at a Fort Beaufort petrol station, during which he was armed with a semi-automatic rifle. Among his claims was that during the 1990s he was a member of the Azanian Peoples’ Liberation Army (Apla), which was the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). One of Apla’s methods of fundraising for the PAC, he stated, was by committing robberies – that ‘robbery in the name of “repossession” became one of the prominent methods used (repossession of the wealth of the African people back to its rightful owners)’ and that the aim was to ‘facilitate a way forward towards achieving its aims and objectives in a “Struggle for Liberation”.’ However, this explanation, given in 2015, is at odds with what he said in his Truth and Reconciliation application for amnesty – that the police got him drunk and used him in a planned operation to discredit the PAC.

What the court observed and the Law Society apparently missed was that the robbery he had claimed was in the cause of the armed struggle in fact took place two months after the new democratic order was born on 27 April 1994 when the armed struggle was in fact over. The court found the applicant showed a lack of honesty, integrity and trustworthiness, ‘all of which are essential qualities for any member of the attorneys’ profession’. On the Law Society, Plaskett said: 'With the greatest of respect to the Cape Law Society, those who considered the application could not have applied their minds properly.

The most perfunctory reading of the founding affidavit would have raised a red flag: the date 27 April 1994 is an iconic date, and is perhaps the most important date in the history of South Africa – the day the new, democratic SA was born; as the date of the robbery was nearly two months later, it should have been apparent that the explanation that the applicant committed the offence in the course of the armed struggle was unlikely to be true. At the very least, this issue required thorough investigation before a decision could be taken on it.' He ordered his judgment be sent to the society.

Judgment