A Malawian woman, Bina Masuku, is in custody in South Africa from November 2019 after being accused of embezzling R1.7 million (about K102 million) of deceased estate funds.

Masuku, 47, is facing multiple charges, including money laundering and fraudulently obtaining a South African national identity (ID) which she allegedly used to get her education and graduated as a lawyer. She was later employed as master of High Court at the Department of Justice in the Rainbow Nation.

Musuku: Government should come in

It is at this Department of Justice where authorities are jointly accusing her alongside her South African boyfriend of embezzling deceased estate funds.

According to multiple media sources in South Africa, Masuku’s boyfriend, Elvis Kgosiemang, 38, was working for a law firm as an ordinary officer, but he allegedly posed as a lawyer to process a number of transactions of deceased estate funds, in collaboration with Masuku, for their benefit.

Meanwhile, back home Masuku’s family is concerned with the prolonged detention of their kin and has requested the Malawi Government to come in and help to convince the South African authorities to allow her to answer the charges in Malawi.

But according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson John Kabaghe, the request is a toll order as the law allows countries to prosecute people within their jurisdictions.

Elisa Musuku, sister to Bina Masuku, said in an interview the last born sister in their family is all alone in South Africa because all her relatives are here in Malawi.

Said Elisa: “Since her arrest in November 2019, we have never set our eyes on her. All we heard was that she stole money at her workplace. We have no means to follow up these issues, all we want is government to help to plead with their counterparts in South Africa to allow Bina to return home and answer her charges here. At least we can afford to visit her here in prison,” she said.

Speaking when she visited our offices in Blantyre during the week accompanied by her husband and a cousin, Elisa Musuku said it has been torturous to their lives that close to three years now, they have no idea in what state their relation is or for how long it would take the South African authorities to conclude the matter.

She said their father, Orton William Masuku, was working for a hotel in Johannesburg where Bina was born, but at a tender age when he felt he could not afford to fend for her, he sent her to Malawi where she did her school up to secondary school at Luwalazi in Nkhotakota.

Elisa Musuku said Bina later returned to South Africa to stay with her father where she had a chance to attain university education at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where she obtained a Bachelor of Laws in March 2004.

Later, her father died and Bina went on to secure a job at the Department of Justice.

A copy of her South African national ID shows that it was issued in 1994, making her a citizen of South Africa. But authorities in the Rainbow Nation now claim the citizenship was illegally obtained.

But Elisa Musuku said because of limited resources, it has been difficult for the family to move around government offices seeking help.

But Kabaghe said government may lend the family an ear to find out what exactly happened, what they want and the status of the case.

He said: “But what can be put clear is that the issue of negotiating to bring her home to answer her charges here is a nonstarter. That is not possible. The law allows the South African authorities to prosecute her there.

“Where we can come in as government is only after the judgement is entered. Good for her if it may turn out to be an acquittal, but if it is a conviction, we can only negotiate for her with the South African authorities to serve her prison sentence in Malawi.”

According to media reports in South Africa, Bina, popularly known as former Mpumalanga master of the High Court, was denied bail while her boyfriend, Kgosiemang, got court bail sometime after their arrest.

The two are being accused of defrauding public members by pocketing money from deceased people’s estates, according to the media reports. Bina lost her job in November 2019 after an internal investigation found she had misrepresented the Department of Justice.

According to the SowetanLIVE, Bina is also facing a charge of contravening the Immigration Act after the Department of Home Affairs found out that she allegedly obtained her South African ID fraudulently.

The spokesperson of the Hawks in Mpumalanga, Captain Dineo Sekgotodi, was quoted as saying that Masuku would handle cases of public members on their deceased’s persons estates and refer them to Kgosiemang, who posed as a lawyer.

“We also found out that accused number two [Kgosiemang] had no documents proving he was a lawyer. He used a family trust to deposit some of the monies taken from deceased people’s estates,” he said.

According to the reports, beneficiaries of the estates could not get access to money that had been left to them by their deceased relatives, prompting them to lodge numerous complaints that led to the investigation.

Lawyer for Masuku, Dimakatso Mashego reading the affidavit by Bina Masuku during one of the court sessions, told the court Bina and Kgosiemang were no longer a couple after their relationship ended in 2017, although they were living in one house.

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