Pretoria - Rape accused Rivers of Living Waters church leader, Bishop Bafana Stephen Zondo, and his legal team are continuing to pinpoint more issues regarding the translation of evidence delivered by some of his accusers.
These matters are dragging the trial out, despite him saying he wanted his sex trial to be over as soon as possible.
The matter was once again postponed yesterday in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, to try to iron out evidence which the defence claimed got lost in translation.
The chief interpreter of the high court was more than two months ago issued with discs containing the evidence of an alleged victim who earlier testified.
Advocate Piet Pistorius at the time said that both his instructing lawyer as well as Zondo pointed out various instances in which they said the interpreter assigned to the trial did not convey exactly to the court what the witness had said.
Judge Papi Mosopa then ordered that the chief interpreter had to listen to the evidence as captured on the discs and that he had to earmark where the interpretation was not correct.
But the interpreter had not yet concluded his task, and he told the court via email that it was a difficult and arduous task. He further said that he is now being delayed due to a death in his family.
Yesterday it came to light that the defence was also now disputing some issues relating to the translation of the evidence of the witness. The evidence of this alleged rape victim has been put on hold until the translation issues have been cleared up.
Prosecutor Jennifer Cronje told the court that the prosecution would, in fact, call no more witnesses in the trial until the defence had given the go-ahead that they were satisfied with the translation of evidence of all the witnesses thus far.
“The State is doing this to avoid a situation where the defence can say at the end of the day that the accused did not get a fair trial,” Cronje said.
The matter was postponed to November 14, and the parties expressed their hope that the translation problems would be ironed out by then.
The trial started nearly a year ago, and Zondo in November pleaded not guilty to 10 charges, of which eight consist of rape.
While Zondo did not give a plea explanation at the time, Pistorius, during the cross-examination of one of the alleged victims, said it was all about money.
He said the alleged victims – mostly members of his congregation – knew he was a wealthy man, and wanted to extort money from him. This was vehemently denied by the women.
While one alleged victim claimed she was 7 when she was raped by the then-teenage Zondo, several of the complainants claimed they were called to his office at church because the preacher wanted to “pray” with them. According to them, they were instead raped. Another testified that in 2008 Zondo raped her at a hotel in Johannesburg. Zondo replied to her evidence that he was not even at the hotel on that day.
Pretoria News