‘Rapist pastor’ bids to delay trial

Asks magistrate to postpone case until 2020

It seems the Bloemfontein pastor accused of raping his daughter on several occasions until she fell pregnant will not stop at anything to ensure that his trial is delayed – probably indefinitely if he could have it his way.

When the 47 year old pastor – who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the daughter – appeared at the Bloemfontein Regional Court last Friday for his trial to begin, he pulled yet another stunt from his seemingly bottomless bag of tricks.

He asked the court to postpone the matter until 2020 so that he could prepare his own defence. This despite the case having been postponed several times since his arrest in November 2013 after he told court that he could not afford a lawyer. At the same time he vowed that he did not want to be represented by a lawyer provided by the state.

In one of his appearances last year, he left the court in stitches after he asked the magistrate to help him sell some of his properties in order to raise legal fees. He told the magistrate that he was not able to do this himself as he was behind bars.

He only hired Nico Naude of Nico Naude Attorneys in November last year after the court ordered him during an earlier appearance on August 26 that he should get a legal representative or he would have to represent himself during his trial.

But the pastor lost the services of Naude around April as he could no longer afford to pay him.

He was expected to take the stand in latest appearance last Friday but he quickly told court that he was not ready and needed ample time to prepare his defence.
The prosecution confirmed to court that the pastor who was supposed to receive the dockets on May 14 to allow him to study them ahead of last week’s appearance only got them on May 27.
“I am not ready to proceed because I have not studied the dockets,” said the rape accused pastor.

“I need more time to prepare myself. I am also having problems reading the police dockets because they are badly written. This has also been worsened by the fact that my spectacles were broken by some prison officers at Groetvlei (Correctional Centre). I am struggling to read,” he added.

The magistrate then asked him how much time he needed so that the court could set a new date for him to take the stand. But the magistrate surely did not expect what was to come.
The slim-built pastor who spoke in Sotho turned to the interpreter and asked him what the day’s date was.
“The 29th of May,” came the answer.

Then, without flinching, the pastor told the court: “Given the number of documents that I have to read and the state that they are in, I think I will need until 2020 to prepare my case.”
In disbelief, the magistrate stared at him and slowly lifted his left hand to start counting on his fingers the time the pastor was requesting to prepare his defence.

An equally dumbfounded public gallery grumbled in unison at the request by the pastor, who, alone in court, appeared unperturbed by the whole matter.

“We are in 2015,” the magistrate eventually said. “So we have to go through 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020… I am afraid we don’t even have diaries that go that far in this court. How do we do that?” asked the magistrate.

To which the pastor responded: “Everything these days is hi-tech (computerised) so this information can be captured for use in future. I don’t see any reason why the court should rush me.
“I was denied bail when I was arrested in 2013 because the police said they needed to do further investigations and that I might interfere (with witnesses). So I need time to prepare myself. I also have a project that I am doing with other inmates at Groetvlei which is also taking up my time.”

Determined to get to some reasonable arrangement with the clearly obdurate pastor, the magistrate tried again: “That’s very interesting. I would suggest that you get assistance reading the documents because 2020 is too far. However July 9 is available.”

But the pastor retorted: “Does the court not realise it has been long since I was arrested in 2013? My life is at a stand-still. I have a child doing matric and I cannot assist.”

Having, apparently, had enough, the magistrate told the pastor that the court was not going to entertain his demands and that he should be back in court for continuation of trial on July 9.
But the embattled pastor had one last salvo to fire and this time shifting attention to the prosecutor whom he accused of mobilising members of the ANC Women’s League – who were sitting in the public gallery – to come to court to oppose his bid to be released on bail.

“What’s the point in doing that (appealing the court’s rulings) when that man there (prosecutor) urged those women to come and oppose my bail application? He is now telling them everything about this case. Does he have the right to discuss my matter with other people?” said the fuming pastor.

The magistrate told him that everything discussed in court was – unless declared by the court to be not for public consumption — public information and urged him to appeal at the high court if he felt his case could be compromised by the prosecutor.

It is believed the pastor started abusing his child, who is now 24 years old, when she was only 10 and managed to keep the matter under wraps by intimidating the daughter and also using his respectable position in society to silence anyone who may have wanted to talk.

His wife with whom he has four kids died several years ago. This allowed the pastor to pursue his absurd sexual advances on the daughter with boundless latitude.
The pastor was initially arrested on accusations of raping his daughter in 2009 but the case was struck off the court roll due to lack of substantive evidence and pressure on the victim to withdraw the matter by the family.

But upon withdrawing the matter, the pastor continued to rape the daughter until she fell pregnant around 2012.
He tried to conceal the pregnancy by moving the daughter to Botshabelo to live with his girlfriend who attended his church claiming that the young woman had become naughty and needed someone to keep a close eye on her.

The court heard that the pastor was caught by the girlfriend having sex with his daughter at the woman’s Botshabelo home. The ex-girlfriend is now a key state witness in the matter and she has already testified in court.