By Bahle Gama
The drama continues to unfold in the E7 million worth estate involving senior police officer Superintendent Clement Sihlongonyane and his siblings.
In a sudden turn of events before the Commission of Inquiry probing the Master of the High Court commonly referred to as ‘Master’, Clement’s siblings have questioned how top lawyer Derrick Jele was appointed to be the executor of their father’s estate.
In 2014, Clement won the estate battle against his 20 siblings who were challenging the validity of their late father’s will.
According to the siblings led by Vincent Sihlongonyane, concerns over the appointment of an executor began in 2015 when a Ginindza lawyer was appointed by the office of Master of the High Court. However, he declined the offer.
It was later in 2017 when Master called a next of kin meeting where they were supposed to appoint an executor. To their surprise, that meeting never materialised because the people who attended did not form a Corum.
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He stated that Master called another meeting on August 31, 2017. On August 29, 2017, he wrote a letter notifying Master that one of his father’s wives Dandane was misusing the funds belonging to the estate and selling cattle.
The letter was received and stamped by Master on August 30, the eve of the set meeting.
However, Master did not entertain the letter, instead, she did not show up to the meetings and it ended up being cancelled without reason.
“I assume it was cancelled because the intention was to appoint Dandane as the executor, but the letter exposing her for being corrupt made it difficult to appoint her,” he said.
Vincent told the Commission that in December 2018, he met with another Mdluli lawyer who was from Ngwazini and told him his father’s estate had been appointed a lawyer.
At the time courts had taken a break and he decided to wait for January to approach the office of Master in this regard.
When he did, he learned that indeed an executor had been appointed and the liquidation process had begun.
He said he went to Manzini where he was attended to by Assistant Master Makhosazane who told him there was correspondence from Fakudze attorneys nominating Dandane as the executor and showed him the correspondence.
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“I tried explaining to her that what the attorneys had said was false, and she said I should present evidence, rightfully so. I was told to put my request in writing which I did and objected to Dandane’s appointment on September 19, 2019,” Vincent said.
Vincent alleged that the instruction by Fakudze attorneys was invalid because the firm only showed up 11 years later as the successor of Nhlabatsi attorneys who were overseeing the estate.
He said the problem was that Fakudze had not shown his face from the moment the estate was registered with Master and a lot of proceedings had taken place and he was still not there.
Vincent further alleged that there is a syndicate at Master that works with lawyers because the office knew very well that Nhlabatsi’s office had been closed and said nothing about a successor.
It was in 2020 when they first saw the power of attorney which Jele has been working under since 2018.
However, he was appointed on September 10, 2018, before the letters of administration were issued on September 19 of the same year which Vincent said renders the documents null and void, because of the events contradicting each other.
“My question is how is Jele working and to whom is he reporting? How is Master allowing such to happen because he was granted power of attorney before Dandana was an executor?” he questioned.
Vincent said their concern was that Jele continued to make correspondence in the file, and they wanted to understand how that was happening.
They went to Manzini to inquire about the instrument which Jele was working under, and they were told it was an instruction to be executor as appointed by Master. When they requested the instrument giving him that authority, they did not receive it.
Instead, Master called the police on them, who upon arrival understood their request and suggested that they all go to the police station where she would show them the power of attorney, but she never did.
“Things continued and we would hear things through the grapevine. Upon enquiring with Master, we found that there were many correspondences. One of these was that my brother (Clement) had put in an application to have all our father’s assets transferred to him.
This he did after Dandame died and the order was granted by the court,” he said.
He stated that Master welcomed Jele without evidence and pleaded that the Commission consider these facts and act accordingly.
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The siblings told the Commission that they want everything to be reversed, including the distributed and transferred estate, and have them choose an executor in their own way.
In response to the allegations, Master of the High Court Phumzile Thomo said she did not remember how Jele was appointed as executor, and it was not in the file but would present a full report to the Commission.
Jele on the other hand told the commission that it was listening to a matter that was heard and tended to in court.
He said he does not have much of an interest in the matter and everything that Vincent and his siblings presented had been addressed in an application that they lost in court.
Jele further stated that he was given a go-ahead by Master to use a copy of the will when the original disappeared enabling him to distribute the estate, which was cemented by a court order issued on December 5, 2023.
“As a result, the assets have been transferred and the estate is dissolved,” he said.
