A former clerk at the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) in the Eastern Cape and her boyfriend have been sentenced to jail on Monday for fraud.
Nombuso Dlamini, 44, and Siyasanga Gqamane, 31 both defrauded the agency of R1.2 million.
The Mbizina Regional Court sentenced them to ten and eight years imprisonment respectively.
Two years of each of the sentences were suspended for five years on the condition that they were not convicted of any offence involving dishonesty.
According to National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Luxolo Tyali, Dlamini was employed by Sassa as a clerk responsible for capturing social grant applications from 2006 to 2011.
She was in a romantic relationship with Gqamane as at then.
“The couple registered fictitious social grants and used unsuspecting people’s identity documents to open bank accounts into which social grant payments were made”
“Sassa suffered a loss in excess of R1.2 million because of this elaborate scheme,” Tyali said.
After an investigation into the unexpected increase of social grant payments without the necessary paper documents was carried out, the couple was arrested in 2011.
30 bank cards were found in the couple’s home but when questioned, they could not provide any reasonable explanation for the cards found in their possession.
“Initially, Dlamini and Gqamane pleaded not guilty and employed numerous tactics to delay the trial, including changing legal representatives at least three times. After the prosecutor, Senior State Advocate Luyanda Mtengwane, led the evidence of state witnesses, the two changed their plea to guilty,” Tyali said.
Mtengwane explained that only a lengthy jail term was appropriate for those found guilty of defrauding the state especially by a government official in the position of trust.
This is because the rate of fraud is becoming more frequent in the country.
The court granted that the convicted fraudsters’ assets which worth R104 000 be confiscated.
