Saved By The Tape

Yesterday I blogged about Elon Musk's revealing blogging. Here is some of my own. It is a small sample of a bigger picture, and it will be worth focusing here for a moment. Following the close of my urban ministry in Cape Town, the police summoned me to meet with them in their board room in Sea Point -- which is four police officers, one of whom the police chief. Two of them turned up -- officers Bartholomew and Pool -- but not the chief, who sent me his apologies. Here's what happened after that meeting:

• An elder of a neighbouring Church, Christian Life Camps Bay, wrote to me that I had made a false statement to the police, in that meeting, concerning his minister (see the e-mail above right -- you may click on it to enlarge). One can be criminally charged for this -- which means me. But I had not made such a statement, or ever mentioned his minister to the police. I asked my attorney to get the elder on the line, and his minister, to arrange a meeting -- but tell them that this was without prejudice. Which is, we would hold nothing against them. The attempt foundered. 

• At about the same time, without my knowing it, one of the two police officers, too, wrote that I had made a statement to the police, in that same meeting, concerning Christian Life Camps Bay's attorney, accusing him of a crime. This claim turned up in Sea Point docket CAS 206/02/15, as Affidavit A.7. But there was no such crime, and I had not made such a statement. How could I now escape two accusations, by two people, indicating that I had made two false statements to the police in that same meeting in the board room? 

My suspicions had been aroused before the meeting. I walked into the board room "wired" -- and got the whole 58 minutes and 51 seconds of it "taped". My audio records were seized in a raid then -- I don't know who did that -- but the critical audio escaped. It is secure. OBSERVATION: The elder and the attorney were the two people principally involved with me in my payout from my old Church, and the police officer who filed a false affidavit was previously involved with the attorney, in connection with failed charges against me. I show an extract of the e-mail here. In principle I could show all of it -- in which the Christian Life Camps Bay elder further accuses me of being "wanton, malicious, or in deception". 

POSTSCRIPT: It was not reflected in this post: I had a long and warm association with this Church -- my father was a minister of this Church -- and this incident, among others, was sadly ruinous to decades-long relations.