The man who tampered with police dockets to protect and shield ANC heavyweight Tony Yengeni from going to jail for drunken driving and breaking his parole conditions, is down and out.
Siphiwo Hewana, a former station commissioner at Goodwood police station in Cape Town, this week admitted for the first time he had issued the instruction to junior police officers to doctor a drunk driving docket on Yengeni.
In an exclusive interview with the Saturday Dispatch, Hewana said he did it to protect a “comrade” from going back to jail. “Indeed I instructed the officer to doctor the time ,” Hewana said.
Hewana blamed his former boss – whose name is known to the Dispatch but cannot be published because he could not be reached – and Yengeni for using him, only to dump him later.
The day after Yengeni’s arrest, Hewana claimed a woman dressed as a makoti (a Xhosa regalia for a newly wedded wife), came to his office. “She claimed to be Yengeni’s wife and asked me to help her husband by doctoring the time of the arrest, citing Tony’s parole conditions,” he said.
Soon thereafter a call came through from Hewana’s boss at the time, instructing him to doctor the charge sheet.
“I agreed and did exactly that. I am not angry at anyone. But I want to see and ask why does he treat me like this; having compromised everything I had to save his back,” Hewana sobbed.
Yengeni declined to comment yesterday when told of Hewana’s story and allegations. “No, no, no, no. I’m not going to comment,” he said.
At the time of Yengeni’s arrest, he was on parole after only serving four months of his four-year prison sentence. Hewana has paid dearly for that decision and his actions.
In May 2010, he was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty on a charge of defeating the ends of justice.
He had ordered his juniors – constables Charles Japhta and Jeremy Voskuil – to doctor the docket and create a new one with false information.
The two constables were also found guilty on a charge of perjury by the Parow Regional Court for changing the time of Yengeni’s arrest from 12.03am on Monday November 26 2007 to 9pm the previous night.
At the time Yengeni was a powerful man and a key member of President Jacob Zuma’s presidential campaign team ahead of the ANC Polokwane conference.
Yengeni was on parole for his role in the arms deal scandal after being found guilty of accepting a discount on a Mercedes-Benz offered to him by a company involved in the arms deal while he was a member of parliament’s defence committee.
As part of his parole conditions, Yengeni had to be inside his Milnerton home by 10pm. If found guilty on the drunk driving charge, he would have been sent back to jail for 15 years for violating his parole conditions. He never went back to jail as he was later acquitted on the drunken driving charge.
Now, seven years after being fired from his job, Hewana has relocated to King William’s Town. The father of two, 53, now survives on a meagre R1500 monthly budget he gets from renting out his garage, which he has turned into a flatlet.
His marriage is also in tatters after his wife left him – a decision he says he fully understands.
From the R1500 he collects from rent, he gives R100 as a monthly allowance to his two girls, aged 12 and six. With the rest he buys groceries, pays his electricity bills and rates. He still has to put petrol in his car to visit his children in East London every weekend.
This while Yengeni lives large, driving around the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town in luxury German cars.
He recently appeared before the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court for yet another drunk driving charge after he was arrested by police, who spotted him driving his Maserati unsteadily.
The life that Hewana now leads is a far cry from the one he lived in Cape Town, funded by the R369000 annual salary he received as one of the top and highest paid police officers in the Western Cape.
He is now a shadow of the flamboyant station commander, who also cruised around in luxury German cars like Yengeni. Two months after losing his job, he had to sell his Mercedes-Benz C200, which he had bought only two months earlier, because he could not afford it.
He said he would love to meet with Yengeni as he had only met him once before. Their only meeting, he claimed, was the day after he instructed his juniors to doctor the docket.
“I want to ask Yengeni to find me a job. I am not after his money,” said Hewana. — zineg@dispatch.co.za
lWatch the interview on www.dispatchlive.co.za. Join the conversation with our reporters on Twitter #ddyengeni