The true cost of wrongful conviction

WHAT rand value can be put on the vigorous, productive years of human life and its human dignity? In the football fan Bathanda Mrabule’s case - whose September 2024 drunk driving sentence and fine of R3,000 or 90 days' imprisonment, of which R1,500 or 45 days was suspended for three years, was overturned by the North West High Court (Mahikeng) on April 10 - it is most of his summer and Easter holidays.

- NKOSIKHULULE NYEMBEZI

All the liberties stripped from him due to a miscarriage of justice at the hands of the state before Acting Magistrate JR Wallis in the Potchefstroom Magistrate's Court, where he insisted on defending himself - much of it down to prosecutorial mishaps and blind ignorance about the rights of the accused person regarding their admission and understanding of all the elements of the crime, especially if the person elected to proceed without any legal representation.