KNYSNA NEWS - On the very same day he and his four closest family members lodged a huge civil claims case against the SAPS, Warrant Officer Johann Burmeister suffered a serious heart attack on Wednesday, March 11.
Burmeister, who has become known as Knysna's 'Top Cop', had been falsely accused by colleagues of stealing a laptop out of the the Knysna Police SAPS13 store.
According to his wife, Denise, he was on his way to see a psychiatrist in George when he suffered the heart attack in Wilderness. She says it seems as if he stopped on the N2 highway to seek help, when he collapsed on the road. He was taken to a hospital in George and from there transferred to the Bay View Private Clinic in Mossel Bay where he received four cardiac stents. He was then transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Knysna Life Private Hospital and discharged on Saturday, March 14.
John Gillespie Attorneys, assisted by Advocate Broekies Bruwer filed the civil claims in the High Court on behalf of the Burmeister family. The defendants are (as stated on the 28-page document listing claims) the minister of police Nkosinathi Nhleko, Sergeant Carmen Chantel Coetzee and Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Matiwane.
The first defendant, the minister of police, is sued in his official capacity as representative of the Government of the Republic of South Africa and responsible minister in terms of the South African Police Services Act, No. 68 of 1995.
The second defendant, Coetzee (one of the two clerks on duty at the Knysna SAPS13 store), admitted during Burmeister's criminal trial that she had lied and that her senior, Warrant Officer Awie Coetzer had pasted a piece of paper into the original store record book in an effort to hide her lie.
The third defendant, Matiwane, was the officer who accused Burmeister of theft and arrested him.
The reasons for the five plaintiffs' claims are stated in the document as malicious prosecution on criminal charge, malicious prosecution of a disciplinary hearing, malicious and/ or unlawful arrest, defamation/ injuria, invasion of privacy as well as psychological and/ or psychiatric injury. Between the plaintiffs altogether nine claims were lodged. The total amount claimed between all five plaintiffs amount to more than R5-million.
The police are still busy investigating Magistrate Derek Torlage's finding when he acquitted Burmeister of the criminal charge, after witnesses confessed that they had lied. "The case is still under investigation. As soon as the investigation has been completed, it will be forwarded to the senior state prosecutor for a decision whether to prosecute or not," said the spokesperson for the Southern Cape Police, Captain Bernadine Steyn on Tuesday, March 17.
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