Lawyer: Annelene van den Heever. Photo: Supplied
Siphamandla Ngcobo apparently had nothing to do with the murder of rap artist AKA, but by the time he hobbled into the Durban magistrate’s court on Thursday, his advocate was breathing fire and journalists were scribbling notes on the case of a man tied by social media to the killing.
Little is known about Ngcobo, arrested in Cape Town on Sunday with three others, beyond that he was represented by Annelene van den Heever who has acted for a host of high-profile clients including terrorists Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie.
Van den Heever put up a spirited argument that police violated Ngcobo’s rights, denied him access to his lawyers and illegally detained him.
She said he and three other unnamed suspects were publicly “paraded” by police after their arrest in Cape Town’s Belhar suburb and in the ensuing narrative on social media they were identified as suspects in the murder of Kiernan “AKA” Forbes and his friend, Tebello Motsoane.
They were shot dead on 11 February while leaving a restaurant in Durban. Their killers made off in a white Mercedes.
After Ngcobo and the other three were arrested, they were filmed cuffed and being frog-marched through a Cape Town shopping centre, prompting a slew of stories linking them to AKA’s murder.
In Thursday’s court hearing, AKA’s name was not mentioned once but there were repeated references to a murdered rap star.
Prosecutor Kuveshnie Pillay said Ngcobo’s case had nothing to do with AKA. She said he had been arrested in connection with armed robbery and aggravated assault.
Carjacking
The charge sheet says that on 7 January 2023, Ngocbo hijacked a white Mercedes Benz outside Joe Cools on the Durban beachfront.
Neither Van den Heever nor Ngcobo’s friends wanted to disclose any of Ngcobo’s personal details or those of the three others arrested with him. It emerged in court that Ngcobo was out on parole for an undisclosed crime and lived in downtown Durban.
His advocate said she feared his life might be at risk because he had been linked to AKA’s murder. She said police had denied her clients access to attorneys and had kept them in custody beyond the 48 hours permitted by law.
She said attorneys tried to visit them in custody in Cape Town but police officers refused access. The men were then transported by road to Durban and on Wednesday night three were released. Ngcobo claimed he was later bound hand and foot and assaulted and tubed.
Van den Heever said he was severely injured and in need of a doctor. She said he would deny the robbery-related charges.
Ngcobo’s court appearance largely centred on an argument by Van den Heever that the police deliberately frustrated his access to court. She said the police hadn’t denied that he and the others were linked to the AKA case.
“I have never seen such police incompetence,” she said, adding that the arrest and the detention of her clients was unlawful.
A police statement put out Monday “noted with concern the ongoing media reports and speculations which are being peddled as a breakthrough in the murders of Kiernan Forbes and Tebello Motsoane”.
Police said unconfirmed reports about the arrest of “an ever-changing number of suspects have been doing the rounds and are misleading the public”.
Pillay said the police denied any wrongdoing. She blamed human error for a mix-up with the police case number. The police, she added, were entitled to hold a suspect for 48 hours, not including the time they were in transit from the site of their arrest to court.
She said investigators in the specialist task team that arrested Ngcobo and others had driven through the night from Durban to Cape Town to make the arrest on Sunday morning and had made haste on their return to Durban.
The task team was not formed to solve a “celebrity murder” and had nothing to do with social media conjecture around the arrest of Ngcobo and the other three.
Van den Heever urged the court to investigate “constitutional infringements”.
Magistrate Ashwin Singh ruled that although logistics was not an excuse to delay a court appearance, it was common cause that the arrests were made 1 700km from Durban and security would have been uppermost in the minds of police officers when the media was “abuzz over a celebrity murder”. He said a host of issues raised in court would be for the trial court to decide.
Singh ordered Ngcobo to be kept in custody until his bail application on 5 April but in the interim to receive medical attention.