{"id":244547,"date":"2022-12-01T19:58:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T17:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-to-start-in-january\/"},"modified":"2022-12-01T19:58:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T17:58:40","slug":"fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraud trial against suspended SJC manager set for January"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mary-Anne%20Gontsana\/khayelitshamagcourt-maryannegontsana-202205120201210_114151.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The Social Justice Coalition\u2019s suspended general manager, Xolani Klaas, briefly appeared at the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court on Thursday. Klaas faces charges related to fraud in excess of R730,000. Archive photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana<\/p>\n<p>The fraud case against the Social Justice Coalition\u2019s (SJC) suspended general manager has been escalated to the regional court in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Xolani Klaas made a brief appearance at the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court on Thursday. Klaas faces charges related to fraud in excess of R730,000.<\/p>\n<p>In June, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/leading-social-movement-rocked-by-corruption-allegations\/\">GroundUp investigation revealed<\/a> that Klaas appeared to be using SJC funds to pay for furniture, household appliances, luxury clothes, watches, groceries, and expensive technology.<\/p>\n<p>Klaas was subsequently suspended and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/sjc-staff-lay-charges-against-suspended-leader-xolani-klaas\/\">SJC staff laid criminal charges<\/a> against him at Lingelethu West Police Station. In July, we reported that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/activist-accused-of-fraud-returns-furniture-he-stored\/\">Klaas had returned some furniture<\/a>, purchased using SJC money, to the organisation\u2019s offices.<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing on Thursday, it was revealed that the police investigations are complete and that the trial would be heard in the regional court in January 2023.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"subheading\">Arson attempt at Khayelitsha Magistrates Court<\/h2>\n<p>Meanwhile, in an incident unrelated to Klaas\u2019s case, a fire started by an unknown man at the entrance to the court resulted in activities being suspended for the day.<\/p>\n<p>There were screams and smoke coming from the security area. A few minutes later the building was evacuated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA man came in by the security area, started pouring petrol and set it alight. Luckily the security guards acted quickly and managed to stop the man and put out the fire. No one was injured,\u201d said court manager Velile Yayi.<\/p>\n<p>Cases and services at the court were suspended for the day. The court is expected to reopen on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Yayi said the man was arrested and the motive for the fire is unknown.<\/p>\n<p>A witness said that before the man set the petrol alight, he was heard saying, \u201cI have been coming to this damn court for eight years\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Social Justice Coalition\u2019s suspended general manager, Xolani Klaas, briefly appeared at the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court on Thursday. Klaas faces charges related to fraud in excess of R730,000. Archive photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana The fraud case against the Social Justice Coalition\u2019s (SJC) suspended general manager has been escalated to the regional court in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-244547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/fraud-trial-against-suspended-sjc-manager-set-for-january.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}