Prosecutor assist a “mumbling” defence witness in the trial of human trafficking and child labour by Chinese

Supplied

The State brought proceedings to a halt and called for a postponement in the trial of seven Chinese nationals charged with human trafficking and child labour as the defence witness was battling to follow proceedings.

Amil Thousaad (27), a Malawian national who took a stand in the Gauteng Division of the High Court (Johannesburg) as a defence witness, took an oath and told the Court that he was comfortable in testifying in English. Thousaad earlier told the Court that he came to South Africa in 2018 and worked in a Chinese factory located at Croesus in Johannesburg that was making fiber before he got employed by the accused. He said he was earning R90 per day working as a machine fixer.

As defence Counsel J. Kruger was leading evidence Thousaad seemed to battle in answering questions in English.

Prosecutor Valencia Dube intervened and told the Court that Thousaad could not be assisted in answering questions. She said in the interest of justice – proceedings would have to be halted to help the witness and get an interpreter. Dube told the Court that “at the rate at which we are going, it seems as if we are going to have a tough time during the cross-examination”.

She asked the Court to arrange for a Chichewa interpreter, a language spoken in Malawi.

The witness appeared in the Chinese matter of Kevin Tsao Shu-Uei, Chen Hui, Qin Li, Jiaqing Zhou, Ma Biao, Dai Junying, and Zhang Zhilian. The accused are facing schedule six offences.

The Chinese are facing counts of human trafficking, contravention of Immigration Act, kidnapping, pointing a firearm, debt bondage, benefitting from the services of a victim of trafficking, conduct that facilitates trafficking, illegally assisting person(s) to remain in South Africa, and failure to comply with duties of an employer.

The seven were arrested on 12 November 2019 in a joint operation carried out at the premises of a company called Beautiful City Pty Ltd based at Village Deep in Johannesburg. The joint inspection blitz was carried out by the Department of Employment and Labour’s Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) branch together with the South African Police Service (SAPS)/ Hawks Unit and the Department of Home Affairs.

The joint operation uncovered illegal immigrants, some of whom were minors working under horror conditions and kept in the locked premises of a factory called Beautiful City. The factory produced cotton fiber sheets.

Five of the accused are out on bail, and the other two are in custody for violating their bail conditions – by trying to skip the country.

Thousaad told the Court that before working for Beautiful City, he had previously worked with accused number four (Jiaqing Zhou) at another factory in Croesus.

During the start of the proceedings, accused number one, Kevin Tsao Shu-Uei was recalled to take a stand again. He had sought to clarify his earlier testimony in which he testified that money from operations of Beautiful City used to pay workers was handled by accused number six (Dai Junying). Kevin Tsao Shu-Uei told the Court that he had made a mistake; the money was handled by accused number seven, Zhang Zhilian.

Advocate Dube accused Kevin Tsao Shu-Uei of selective memory, asking him, “At what time did you get your memory back?”.

The matter has been postponed for further defence evidence on 4 October 2024.