One of SA’s longest-running court cases – a learner’s licence “crib note” trial – is coming to an end after almost 16 years with the fraud convictions of a driving school official and learner’s licence examiner.
Now all that is left is for Rapal Singh, formerly of Southbound driver training, and Sharon Olsen, once an examiner at Durban’s Rossburgh testing grounds, to be sentenced in April.
During the case – which began with a first appearance in July 1996 – the original prosecutor and a defence advocate had become magistrates and one of the accused, Ramnarain Ramanand, the owner of Southbound, had died.
Another major issue was the appointment of the presiding magistrate King Ndlovu as a judge. A change in law – in the form of the Judicial Matters Amendment Act – was required in order to allow him to sit as a regional magistrate to finalise the matter.
Last week – while sitting as a judge of appeal in Durban’s labour court – Ndlovu again donned his “regional court hat”, to hand down judgment in the “marathon trial”.
“It is long overdue,” he said, saying the blame for the delays could not be attributed to anyone. During the trial, 129 learner’s licence applicants – all of whom turned State witness – gave evidence about how they were approached by Singh and paid money in return for the crib notes which they used openly during the learner’s licence examinations.
Ndlovu said a number of recorded tapes were lost and could not be traced and certain counts had to be discarded.
Deal
Ndlovu ruled that Hazel Jessop, a fellow Rossburgh examiner who had also taken kickbacks, had been a reliable witness. She had been part of the illegal operation.
The deal was that she would be given a list of candidates from Southbound and she only gave them one specific question book, the “K” book, and then turned a blind eye to their cheating.
In return she received money, given to her in envelopes by a cleaner, Vincent Hlongwane, who backed up her version.
The magistrate said Hlongwane had been severely criticised by the defence because he was a self-confessed alcoholic who drank at work.
“This is irrelevant and unfair,” he said. “He was not in the dock. He was a credible and reliable witness and I still have a picture of his demeanour in the witness box in my mind to this day.”
Also damning against the accused was the evidence of forensic auditor Trevor White, who found that 96.4 percent of Southbound applicants had been given the “K” book and that while the pass rate generally was 47.6 percent, Southbound applicants had an 83 percent pass rate.
Ndlovu said that in spite of the overwhelming evidence against Singh, he had not given evidence or called any witnesses. Olsen, he said, denied all the allegations, claiming to be “totally against it” and had given examples of how she had reported cheating to her superiors.
“Nothing stopped her from getting strict with other applicants whose names were not in the selected list given to her by Southbound. It would not be surprising if she was strict when there were no kickbacks,” Ndlovu said.
“It is common cause that she was in charge of the test sittings in which there was cheating. It is highly improbable that she did not know what was happening,” he said.
Singh was convicted of 44 counts of fraud and Olsen of 33 counts of fraud.
Sentencing will proceed on April 12.
