A Makhanda teenager, whose right knee was injured after being shot with a rubber bullet during a violent xenophobic protest in October 2015, can now sue police for damages.
The then grade 10 pupil, 19-year-old Asonge Dyonashe, was walking with friends from Nombulelo Secondary School when they came across a group of protesters looting a foreign-owned shop in Joza township on October 21 2015.
It is alleged that police started firing stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, with people running in all directions.
Dyonashe alleges police shot at her too, hitting her in the knee.
She lodged a claim against the police in the town’s magistrate’s court but was unsuccessful.
The unidentified presiding magistrate dismissed her claim, saying the shooting “was in the circumstances not unlawful”. Two police sergeants at the time testified that they had no knowledge of what had happened to Dyonashe.
She took the matter to the high court on appeal, where the magistrate was lambasted by high court judge Clive Plasket, who accused him of forming “a poor impression of the appellant as a witness”.
“In my view, much of his criticism of her is not justified.
“The magistrate criticised the appellant for saying that the first she knew of the violence was when she saw looters emerging from a shop.
“He was of the view that she must have heard gunfire and the detonation of stun grenades while she was at school.
“Apart from the fact that this seems to me to be a peripheral issue, I cannot see why he found fault with her evidence that as she was walking home after school, she saw that there were a lot of people running up and down, and as she and her companions approached a certain shop, they also noticed people running, coming out the shop.
“I can see nothing improbable in this evidence,” said Plasket in his judgment.
Plasket said the magistrate drew unwarranted, adverse findings against Dyonashe’s credibility, relied on speculation and unjustifiably took the general evidence of the police witnesses as to the events that day into account, in finding that the shooting of the appellant was justified.
He ordered that the matter be taken back to the lower court for it to determine and quantify claims for Dyonashe’s damages.
Dyonashe’s attorney Naran Dullabh said they were happy that “justice had been served”.
The teenager on Monday said it has been “a painful three years” for her as she could hardly walk on her own after the incident...