The Johannesburg High Court yesterday handed down an interim order barring Ekurhuleni Metro Police Chief Robert McBride from intimidating, harassing or threatening three metro policemen.

It also prohibits McBride and five other metro police officers from acting ‘in any manner which violates the peace or bodily integrity’ of the three men, notes a report on the IoL site. They brought an application for a restraining order against McBride and 13 other metro police, claiming they had been threatened, harassed and intimidated since making a report on a car crash involving McBride in December. The order handed down by Justice Moroa Tsoka gave counsel for McBride and the other respondents until July 24 to deliver answering affidavits. It gave counsel for the three metro policemen until July 31 to deliver replying affidavits.
Full report on IoL site


The three have gone into hiding out of fear for their lives, the court was told. Their counsel, Marne Strydom, said Chief Superintendents Stanley Segathevan and Patrick Johnston and Superintendent Itumeleng Koko were ‘living in terror’. They were not answering their telephones and were considering abandoning their homes. They had been threatened with murder, the rape of their wives and the killing of their children, starting on May 4, with threats as recently as last week. According to a Mail & Guardian Online report, Strydom asked the court to take into account that McBride and the other respondents ‘have the necessary resources to make good on these threats’. McBride's counsel, Nazeer Cassim, accused counsel for the metro police of being ‘selective’ in the information it presented to the court. An interdict was a ‘public declaration’ to a ‘bad guy’ that ‘everyone knows of your ill-intent’, Cassim told the court. That ‘doesn't fit’ in this case, he submitted. ‘... They are using the courtroom in a public debate with the respondent ... to perpetuate their grievance ...,’ he told the court, suggesting that the Labour Relations Act provided for a more appropriate forum for this.
Full Mail & Guardian Online report


McBride says the protection order is ‘nothing’, and plans to file an explosive replying affidavit within weeks. Speaking to The Mercury after leaving court, McBride said: ‘I have been holding back. But now I am going to reveal all I know. Everything will be there.’
Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)