Old age saves pensioner from jail over disputed plot
A 65-year-old woman narrowly avoided jail time when Broadhurst Magistrates’ Court granted her a pardon due to her advanced age and alleged ailment. Kgalalelo Daniel appeared before the court on Wednesday morning, following the issuance of a summons for civil imprisonment by Salome Boikanyo, whose lawyers had sought to jail the old woman for an P18,000 debt.
According to court documents, on the 14th October, 2022 the same court had ruled in favour of Boikanyo, who was demanding the above-mentioned amount. According to Daniel, the money was to be paid as compensation for a one-room house which was built in a plot that the Land Board had declared as Daniel’s.
Daniel therefore appeared before court on Wednesday to show cause why a decree of civil imprisonment should not be made against her. In her defence, the elderly woman explained that on the mentioned date, 14th October, 2022, she was hospitalised at Princess Marina Hospital, thereby unable to attend court proceedings, let alone receive any summons from the court.
“I was discharged in July this year, and a few weeks later, I got a call from a man who was threatening to arrest me. What had me confused was that I was being arrested for a plot that belongs to me,” she explained?
Outside court, Daniel presented evidence proving her ownership of the residential plot in question, located in Letlhakane. “In 2019, I arrived in Letlhakane to build a home on the plot, which I had been given by the Land Board. To my surprise, there already was another small room built there, so I engaged the Land Board and they assured me that the plot was indeed mine,” she said.
Following this revelation, Boikanyo, deeply upset, sought compensation for the house she had built on Daniel’s plot. She eventually filed a complaint with the court, which ruled in her favour.
Boikanyo was absent from the hearing, but her lawyer insisted that the civil imprisonment application be approved. She argued that Daniel failed to submit her defence within the allotted time.
Nonetheless, Magistrate Rosemary Khuto noted Daniel’s old age, and that she was a lay person and that she was indeed in hospital at the time, therefore allowing her one more chance to prepare a defence. The case will resume for hearing on 21st February, 2024.
