This comes after it was revealed yesterday that the prison officials at the Grootvlei Prison were unable to draw his name from their list of inmates due in court owing to what an official at the court said was “load-shedding”. OFM has since learned that this was owing to a power outage rather than load-shedding, as reported earlier. The prosecutor in this case, who was clearly annoyed by the delay, said he would contact prison officials to find out what the delay with Moletsane’s appearance was.

 A visibly irritated Prosecutor Tumelo Namola requested the magistrate to grant the accused one last appearance before the court on Friday as he would later today proceed to call the prison to ask them what the delay with his appearance was. Meanwhile, Eskom spokesperson, Stefanie Janse van Rensburg, spoke to OFM News on the mistake court officials made stating that it was load-shedding. It was, in fact, probably a power outage as there has not been load-shedding in the Free State since early February.

“There have been certain constraints, but not load-shedding. What they probably actually had, was a power outage. Load-shedding actually occurs when there is an imbalance between supply and demand. The power stations are not supplying enough electricity to the grid or the demand is too high and we need to balance the two to ensure that there isn’t a collapse of the system.  A power outage, on the other hand, is normally just a fault, for instance, there was lightning somewhere, something broke or it can be deliberate for maintenance reasons, for example, but it’s not the same as load-shedding,” she explained.

 Meanwhile, the issue of power cuts at prison now shines the spotlight on how many cases provincially and both nationally are delayed by power outages, as well as whether or not these affected state-owned legal institutions neither have generators nor alternative means of back-ups which are expected to kick in and provide power when the main supply fails. 

OFM News has submitted questions to the spokesperson of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) with regards to Morake’s particular case, however, at the time this article was published, received no response. Morake allegedly died at the hands of Moletsane, her mother’s former lover, as it is alleged that he poisoned her in November last year.

OFM News