‘TEACHER DECLARES ALIVE CHILD, UNCLE AND AUNT DEAD’

The Mhlatane High School teacher, Swazi Simphiwe Matsebula leaving the Magistrates Court after her trial yesterday. (pic: Sibusiso Zwane)

BY JABULISA DLAMINI

MANZINI - A 33-year-old  Mhlatane High School  teacher was arrested for allegedly defrauding the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) an amount of E15 000.

Swazi Simphiwe Matsebula of Hlane is alleged to have pro-duced death certificates to the association’s burial scheme leading the officials to believe that the documents were aut-hentic and as a result she was awarded E15 000 for three different people who are actu-ally alive.
The beneficiaries include the suspect’s 12-year old child (Lwandzile Nyatsi), her aunt (Thandi Matsebula) who is based in South Africa and her uncle (Raymond Simelane).

All these people have been proclaimed dead by the Mini-stry of Home Affairs as the suspect produced their birth certificates when processing their death certificates.
Matsebula, spotting a short hair-do pleaded guilty to all three charges of fraud and elected to conduct her own defence. All three offences were committed on different dates between last year and this year.
SNAT National Burial Scheme Treasurer Freedom Dlamini told the court that he was responsible for authorising and processing death claims paid by SNAT members.

“Members usually have names of their relatives as bene-ficiaries and with supporting documents such as death certificates, a copy of the identity documents and a current pay slip, we then conduct our own investigations to verify the authenticity of death and then process the death claims,” Dlamini said.
He mentioned that in the case of the suspect, there were some questionable elements and enough grounds of suspicion and the burial scheme had to request the police to assist them in their investigations.

Dlamini said one of the beneficiaries Raymond Sime-lane was not on the list kept in their system but instead there was a person named Jealous Dlamini. He further said they tried questioning the suspect about it and she informed them that it was the same person.
“We processed the claims and after investigations of our own we learnt that all three bene-ficiaries were in fact alive. Ef-forts were made to contact the suspect so the matter could be settled internally but, however, there was a lack of commi-tment on her part.

sarcastic

“When asked by the scheme’s clerks if she did not care about losing her job, she was sarcastic and ended up not coming to the offices, not understanding the seriousness of the offence,” the treasurer said.
The suspect denied ever refusing to come to the burial scheme offices alleging that she had communicated with the scheme’s secretary on the issue and was still going to meet with them.

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