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Johannesburg - The Durban estate agent facing four charges of crimen injuria in the Randburg Regional Court testified on Monday that she, like the police officers who had been subjected to her racist comments, was a victim of injustice.
Vicki Momberg is accused of insulting a police officer and at least four telephone operators at Gauteng's 10111 emergency helpline on February 3, 2016.
Momberg claims she had been the victim of a snatch-and-grab theft that evening and had "acted illogically" because of the traumatic experience, Netwerk24 reported.
Momberg, neatly dressed in black, started crying when she testified that she felt as though the telephone operators were not trying to help her when she reported the theft.
State prosecutor Yusuf Baba said telephone recordings played in court in March had shown that Momberg hadn't given the operators a chance to speak.
"Does it seem as though someone who is swearing at another person wants help?" Baba asked.
"I have already apologised for that," Momberg responded.
Momberg said she hadn't filed a case of theft because she had previously reported similar incidents on which the police had never followed up.
'I hope he will one day understand'
She said she also didn't know what the thief looked like, or what clothes he was wearing.
"All I would have been able to say was that he was black," she testified.
The court watched a video in which Momberg made racist comments against the police officer, Constable David Mkhondo.
Mkhondo also testified in March that he, his supervisor and a colleague had stopped at the Bel Air shopping centre in Northriding, Johannesburg, at around 21:00, after the driver of a white Volkswagen Polo which was behind the marked police car, flashed its lights.
The Polo also stopped. A woman got out of the car and "immediately" started hurling racist comments.
Momberg didn't deny this, but said Mkhondo's appearance had "intimidated" her because she had earlier been robbed by a black man.
"I hope he [Mkhondo] will one day understand what I felt like."
Momberg has pleaded not guilty and is basing her defence on non-pathological unaccountability. She insists the comments weren't directed specifically at the witnesses.
The case continues.
