Pretoria - The overzealous conduct of police in arresting a Congolese national on unsubstantiated charges of being unlawfully in the country and fraud, will cost the taxpayer dearly.
The court ordered the police to pay him R300 000 in damages.
Geophonse Mabiala, who hails from Brazzaville, turned to the Western Cape High Court after he was unlawfully arrested and detained for a week.
He arrived in South Africa in 2004 and he held a lawful asylum-seeker permit to remain in the country. He worked as a firefighter and also studied in South Africa.
In June 2013 he went to a public service kiosk at the Cape Town Station, manned by the SAPS, to make an affidavit before a commissioner of oaths so that he could lawfully exchange the SIM card on his cell phone.
In the process of deposing the affidavit, it came to the attention of the SAPS officer on duty that he was a foreign national.
Believing that Mabiala might be an illegal immigrant and had fraudulently used a document to verify his identity, the SAPS officer ordered him to remain present behind the counter at the booth while the status of the document was verified with Home Affairs.
He was subsequently arrested and taken to the police station, where he was held.
He was taken to court later, where the charge of being illegally in the country was dropped. He was, however, further detained for a few days on a charge of fraud, as he had an ID-size document in his possession, stating who he was and with the official stamp of Home Affairs.
The police said they believed this to be fraudulent, but it later turned out that Mabiala had legally obtained this document from a Home Affairs office.
Mabiala testified that he usually carried his permit in his wallet, but when he opened it that afternoon at the kiosk to take it out in order to verify his identity, he discovered that he had left it at home.
He explained that he also had a small, credit-card sized document issued to him by Home Affairs. He said that as he opened his wallet, a police officer spotted the card, grabbed it and accused him of being a Nigerian fraudster.
He protested his innocence, pointing out that he was from the Congo, had no criminal record, and that he had a permit to be in South Africa. According to him, he offered to fetch his permit at home, but the police were not interested. He was, instead, thrown in a police cell for a week.
The SAPS, on the other hand, insisted that he tried to use the Home Affairs card as proof of his identity. They insisted that this card was fraudulently obtained.
It later transpired that all was above board and charges were withdrawn.
He, however, had to endure a week in a tiny, filthy police cell, with very little to eat. He also told the court how his life was threatened by members of a notorious gang, with whom he had to share his cell.
Judge Patrick Gamble concluded that R300 000 was a fair compensation for the hardships Mabiala had to endure.
Pretoria News