Advocate harassed by BLF leader at Myeni trial

TALI FEINBERG

“They screamed at her, saying she was a racist, and that OUTA [the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse] was a front for the Democratic Alliance,” Steinberg’s attorney and OUTA lawyer Rashaad Pandor told the SA Jewish Report. He was describing the abuse on Friday, 21 February, that led Steinberg to ask for extra security from the judge.

Steinberg is representing OUTA and the SAA Pilots Association which took Myeni to court to have her declared a delinquent director following Myeni’s “plunging of the national carrier into chaos during her tenure from 2012 to 2017 as board chair”.

After the incident, Steinberg told the court, “There are members of the public in the gallery here that are verbally and physically assaulting members of the plaintiff’s legal team. I, for one, feel threatened and scared. This isn’t a conducive atmosphere for me to do my work”.

Judge Ronel Tolmay criticised the confrontation, saying, “Every litigant should feel free in a democracy to bring their case to court, and present it … and feel safe in doing so.” She agreed to inform the judge president, as well as the police, and to request extra security. She also warned, “I have the power to put you in jail. And I will do that.”

Describing the chain of events on Friday, Pandor said that during a recess at the high court in Pretoria, Steinberg and her team saw Myeni go and converse with her lawyer.

“Dudu Myeni was under cross examination. The rules are that you can’t consult your attorney during cross examination, but Myeni appeared to be doing so. When Carol Steinberg approached them to raise this, Mngxitama and his supporters started recording the argument on their cell phones, so one of our attorneys, Greg Harrison, took out his cell phone to record it as well.

“It was at this point that one of Myeni’s supporters hit his phone out of his hand, physically assaulting him and verbally harassing Steinberg.”

Harrison said Mngxitama and two others told him to “go back to Holland”, and that they were “no longer slaves. One of them repeatedly asked me if I thought he was a monkey. They tried forcibly to take my phone from me.”

Said Pandor, “Security was called, we notified the judge about what happened, and there has been increased security in the building since Monday. Mngxitama hasn’t been in court this week, but the man who hit the cell phone out of Greg’s hand has been there.”

Pandor said that the “stakes are high” for Myeni and her supporters, and their support is “blind loyalty. They don’t like the fact that she is under pressure.

“Their support doesn’t waiver, even after developments in court. She is still on the boards of a number of companies and state-owned enterprises, where she is in a position to receive a high income and has the ability to siphon money. Yet, if we are successful, she will be banned for life from serving on the boards of any private or public company.”

He said that Myeni had abundant resources, “and we all knew the risks when taking on this case. This includes our witnesses, who I think are the bravest of the lot of us. But since the physical confrontation on Friday, we don’t rest easy. There is definitely a heightened sense of awareness. Yet we bear that risk, and carry on.”

Back in August 2017, Mngxitama tweeted, “For those claiming the legacy of the holocaust is ONLY negative think about the lampshades and Jewish soap.” In another tweet, his bizarre and anti-Semitic rant continued, “I concur with @helenzille that the aroma of the burning flesh from the furnace of the holocaust may wet [sic] the appetite of the S.A. cannibals.”

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies took Mngxitama to court over the tweets in 2017. The case has not yet been heard. The far-left BLF party was de-registered after the Freedom Front Plus lodged a complaint in court, and an appeal against de-registration was denied in November 2019.