INLSA
Durban – After almost two years of silence, one of the convicted Durban North dagga dealers said on Thursday that he was the sole mastermind and took the rap for the entire sophisticated operation.
Travis Bailey testified in the Durban Magistrate’s Court that he started the dagga laboratory in the basement of the home of his friends, Tracey Pretorius and Tyrone Hofland, without their knowledge.
Bailey, who was testifying in mitigation of sentence, said when he was forced to tell Hofland about the dagga growing operation, Hofland ordered that it be removed.
Hofland had also told him he did not want Pretorius to know about the dagga.
Pretorius and Hofland, as well as their co-accused, Bonzile Chutshela, Senzele Dlezi and Bailey, were arrested in October 2010 following a raid on Pretorius’s home, where 44kg of dagga, worth about R2.2 million, was found under cultivation in a concealed basement.
They were convicted in November last year, but asked that sentencing be postponed while they brought a review application in the high court, arguing that their advocate, JP van der Veen, was “incompetent and had put up a technical defence based on the constitutionality of South Africa’s drug laws”.
The case made headlines when the advocate disclosed in the review that Pretorius and Hofland had, in fact, confessed their crimes to him.
Last week, Judge Gregory Kruger dismissed the review application and said it was not in the interests of justice to allow them “any further opportunity of escaping liability”.
Before Bailey testified, the courtroom mood was tense as defence attorneys and magistrate N Kathrada had a heated verbal exchange over whether or not the defence was entitled to an adjournment to prepare for mitigation of sentence.
Kathrada refused a request for adjournment and said she had granted several indulgences to the accused.
Attorney Jacques Botha, acting for Bailey, applied for Kathrada to recuse herself, saying the proceedings were “bordering on abuse” and the sentence was a “foregone conclusion”.
In his testimony, Bailey said Chutshela and Dlezi were employed by him as labourers but were not involved in the cultivation of the plants.
“They had never been there before the day they were arrested in the basement. They came to the house on that day to help me cut down the plants because Tyrone (Hofland) wanted it out of the house.”
Bailey also claimed that he had been growing the plants to extract oil which he wanted to sell for medicinal uses.
“My intention was to produce oil for the treatment of skin cancers and psoriasis. I knew it was illegal, but I did not consider myself to be a criminal.”
In an emotional address, Bailey’s wife, Jennifer, said her children would be destroyed if her husband was sent to jail.
“I do not agree with what he did and I was angry with him for a long time. My children are close to their father and are frightened by the prospect of him going to jail.”
Sentencing was adjourned to next week.
kamini.padayachee@inl.co.za
The Mercury
