A Durban home affairs department employee, who pocketed R768,000 in just under three weeks by processing fraudulent passports for foreigners, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Judith Salome Zuma, while not a leader of the corrupt syndicate, was “no minion”, Durban regional court magistrate Garth Davis said, in handing down sentence on Thursday.
Her actions, along with others, were part of the “capture of the department of home affairs” with employees seeking to “refuel their pockets” while undermining the integrity of passports, generally, and the population register, he said.
Zuma pleaded guilty to the offences, which included 192 counts of fraud and contravening the Identification Act and the Immigration Act.
She also pleaded guilty to a charge of corruption, in that she tried to bribe an investigator with R10,000.
In her written plea, she said she was introduced to “Alex and Nomfundo” by a former colleague. She was asked to assist them in the processing of fraudulent passport applications for foreigners. She was told that an IT specialist would delete all the evidence.
Zuma said she initially refused to become part of the scheme, but eventually agreed “because of financial pressures”.
Over several weekends, she and her co-conspirators met at the department’s Commercial Road offices, though she was not ordinarily stationed there. She logged into the system using her biometric log-in details and entered false information to give the appearance that the applications were legitimate.
She admitted she was paid R4,000 for each of the 192 passports which were issued between May 28 2021 and June 12 2021, receiving a total of R768,000.
Davis said Zuma’s lawyer had argued she had shown remorse by pleading guilty, had lost her job and that she should be treated as leniently as possible.
The prosecutor, however, argued for a lengthy term of imprisonment.
Serious cases need to be treated with an appropriate degree of judicial scrutiny, too often the courts have been criticised for a lax and soft approach to so-called white collar crime.
— Magistrate Garth Davis
Zuma, who is 47 and holds an honours degree in policy development, told the probation officer “this was not her proudest moment and she wished she had done things differently”.
Davis said the level of deceit, motivated by greed, was disturbing.
“Serious cases need to be treated with an appropriate degree of judicial scrutiny, too often the courts have been criticised for a lax and soft approach to so-called white collar crime.
“The myth that perpetrators involved in serious large-scale theft or fraud and corruption are not really prison material or ‘criminals’ needs to be dispelled,” he said.
“In this case the sheer magnitude of the corrupt behaviour is so deeply ingrained, the term ‘capture of the DHA’ comes to the fore. It is an intolerable situation.”
He said while Zuma had pleaded guilty, the state had an overwhelming case against her. Her attempt to bribe the investigator pointed against her purported genuine remorse. The interests of justice outweighed Zuma’s personal circumstances and a lengthy term of imprisonment was the only appropriate sentence.
Davis ordered some of the sentences to run concurrently, resulting in an effective sentence of 12 years.
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