Magistrate dragged to court for unlawfully revoking bail

Thabisa Khumalo and Binary Mkandla were on 1 February this year taken to court on fraud charges and they appeared before Ms Mazhandu who was sitting in Court Two.
The prosecutor, Mr Masimba Saruwaka, indicated to the court that the matter was for initial remand and that the State was not opposed to bail in respect of the pair.
Ms Mazhandu asked why the State was not opposed to bail when detectives from the Vehicle Theft Squad indicated that they were opposed to bail.
At 3pm, on the same day, the magistrate pronounced that bail was pegged at $100 each.
Their lawyer, Mr Nduduzo Dube of Cheda and Partners, then left for his office while Khumalo and Mkandla’s relatives went to pay the bail amount.
Mr Dube wrote in the court papers that after 30 minutes, he saw one of the relatives coming to his office to inform him that bail had been paid but that the accused could not be released because Ms Mazhandu had told prison officers at the court holding cells not to release his clients.
When he went to talk to the magistrate, she told him that the police were alleging that she had been paid $300 by his clients’ relatives as a bribe.
“The applicants (Khumalo and Mkandla) are now illegally in custody after they were admitted to bail and have since paid their bail recognisance as ordered by the 1st respondent (Ms Mazhandu). The 1st respondent cannot at law revoke bail where she has already decided,” wrote Mr Dube.
He said the applicants had to approach the High Court after they had exhausted all possible avenues at their disposal.
Senior Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Nicholas Ndou reinstated the bail and directed the officer-in-charge at Bulawayo Prison to immediately release the applicants.
Mrs Angeline Munyeriwa, of the Attorney General’s Office, representing the 2nd respondent (the State), conceded that what the magistrate did was irregular.