SAPS/NPA face R60m wrongful arrest claim
When Prince Ngwenyama walked into the Masoyi police station to lay a criminal complain in 2008, he was arrested him on suspicion of robbery.
A one-day trial saw him convicted and imprisoned for 17 years on charges of rape and housebreaking with intent to rape. His conviction was eventually overturned last year.
News24 reports that Ngwenyama has sued the police and the NPA for unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution and is seeking R60n in damages.
Ngwenyama’s ordeal was chronicled in a Mpumalanga High Court (Mbombela) judgment, handed down on Thursday.
Acting Judge Malose Monene labelled the matter as tragic, painful, callously handled and a constitutionally distasteful story reminiscent of the apartheid colonial era with no reason to be lived, let alone told, in the new dispensation.
Officers decided that Ngwenyama fit the description of a suspect in a robbery. They allegedly interrogated him, assaulted him and then arrested him, despite the complainants in the case suggesting the police had the wrong man.
Monene said Ngwenyama was never given a chance to apply for bail.
Monene said the ‘complainant’ in the new charges (was) apparently someone different from the two complainants he was allegedly initially accused of robbing.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 30 November 2009 by the Nelspruit Regional Court.
Ngwenyama spent the next 15 years trying in vain to appeal the conviction and sentence.
He finally found success on 9 May 2025 when a full Bench set aside both the conviction and sentence.
Neither the police nor the NPA opposed the suit, leaving it to the High Court to decide whether a case had been made out for default judgment.
News24 notes that it found that Ngwenyama’s arrest and subsequent detention were unlawful, accepting the version that he was arrested without a warrant on the whim of overeager police officers who had no reason to arrest and detain him when 'they unreasonably suspected him of an offence in the face of statements by witnesses that he did not fit the bill of their assailant'.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
