Five people convicted of attempting to defraud the Gaborone City Council of P24 million had a breather recently after learning that their sentencing, which was scheduled to be before Christmas, will now be after New Year.
This follows after an agreement was reached between the defence lawyers and the Southern Regional Magistrate Barnabas Nyamazabo, who was presiding over the marathon case that has taken five years.
Initially, the convictions’ defence lawyers had asked to be given typed versions of both judgments and proceedings of the case in order to make meaningful mitigations on behalf of their clients.
The Court was, however, at the time not able to provide them as Nyamazabo told them that they were still to be typed and that one officer responsible for typing them was on leave.
When they were finally made available after weeks, the lawyers again asked for another postponement to go through the lengthy judgments and proceedings and it was agreed that the best time would be after the festivities.
The four GCC employees who have been convicted along with Dijeng are Gilbert Sithole, Frank Stegling, Frank Molaletsi and Saddie Abbey.
They were convicted of having illegally varied GCC tender for bush clearing along Segoditshane river bed, amongst other things. They are all on bail as Nyamazabo had agreed with defence submissions that the convicts had all through the five years of their case attended court hearing without fail.
