Pretoria - A power failure at the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, resulted in the postponement of the corruption case of the former head of crime intelligence, Richard Mdluli.
He and his co-accused, Heine Barnard and Solomon Lazarus, were due to face charges of corruption, fraud and theft.
The charges stem from allegations of “gross abuse” of the secret services account. Barnard was also charged with defeating the administration of justice. Their matter will now return to court only in February 2023.
Another matter due to appear yesterday was the trial of a woman accused of hiring hit men to kill her parents and siblings.
The woman, who was 16 at the time, in 2016, allegedly confessed she had hired the two hit men who gunned down her father, mother, 18-year-old sister and brother, 6.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana said the matter was rolled over to today as a result of the outage. The outage left scores of people frustrated after their cases were postponed abruptly with no explanation yesterday morning.
Although Eskom had suspended its load shedding schedule and implemented stage 2 only between 4pm and midnight, people due to attend court proceedings were left loitering outside the building on Madiba Street.
Security personnel at the entrance informed persons wishing to enter the building that they did not know what had caused the power outage and they had been told not to let anyone enter.
They said that due to the outage, all criminal matters were postponed for the day and would not resume even if the power was restored.
City of Tshwane spokesperson Lindela Mashigo initially said the metro was not sure what caused the outage, but later said it was a power trip. Technicians restored power by midday.
Pretoria News