Senzo Meyiwa and Kelly Khumalo were lovers when he was shot.
(Photo by Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Lucky Morajane)
The state found itself in a pickle this week after being forced to introduce evidence implicating one of its expected witnesses, singer Kelly Khumalo, in the October 2014 murder of footballer Senzo Meyiwa, with whom she was having an affair.
When the trial began in April 2022, prosecutor George Baloyi said the basis of the state’s case was that Meyiwa was fatally shot during a robbery gone wrong, in which Khumalo’s phone was stolen.
However, in a dramatic week in the Pretoria high court, the state changed tack, introducing evidence that the Bafana Bafana captain, who was married, was assassinated at the alleged orders of Khumalo.
The sudden about-turn in the prosecution’s strategy led legal expert Elton Hart to assert that Khumalo should have been charged alongside the five men on trial for Meyiwa’s murder because the state had known since 2020 that the renowned singer was implicated in the alleged hit.
The trial for the murder of the soccer star, who died at Khumalo’s family home in Vosloorus, Gauteng, began in April 2022. However it had to restart after 15 months when the presiding judge, Tshifhiwa Maumela, was suspended for misconduct after failing to deliver judgments in other cases within a reasonable period.
In July, Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng replaced Maumela.
On Wednesday, state witness Brigadier Bongani Gininda, who is leading the investigation into Meyiwa’s murder, testified that the first accused, Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya, had implicated Khumalo in ordering the hit on the Bafana Bafana captain.
Gininda, reading his 2020 affidavit, said Sibiya was first linked to the murder through witness statements under oath and indirect evidence such as boasting to individuals closely associated with him in KwaZulu-Natal about his involvement in the murder.
Alongside Bongani Ntanzi, Mthobisi Ncube, Mthokoziseni Maphisa and Fisokuhle Ntuli, Sibiya faces charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, illegal possession of a firearm and the illegal possession of ammunition.
Gininda further told the court that police had linked Khumalo with accused number three, Mncube, and accused number five, Ntuli, through cellphone evidence.
Hart, who is at the University of Johannesburg’s Law Clinic, said it made no sense that Gininda did not charge Khumalo when he received this evidence and that it took so long for the state to reveal it.
“When the brigadier got this information, the damning evidence that Kelly Khumalo paid the hitman to kill Meyiwa, he then had the option to charge Kelly Khumalo in the onset with the five accused persons. And let the prosecution decide whether they would charge Khumalo or not, if the evidence does not allow,” Hart said.
A former defence advocate in the trial, Dan Teffo, caused a stir in the court in June 2022 when he suggested that Khumalo was the one who had killed Meyiwa.
During the now nullified proceedings of the trial, Teffo told the court that he would call an eyewitness to testify that Khumalo had fired the shot that killed her lover with a revolver brought to the crime scene by Longwe Twala.
At the time, Teffo represented the first four accused — Sibiya, Ntanzi, Ncube and Maphisa.
He made the assertion while cross-examining state witness Sergeant Thabo Mosia.
“Maybe his [Teffo’s] methods were unconventional, and how he was trying to get to the bottom of things maybe a little bit uncordial, but he had something and he maintained from the get-go that the five accused persons were framed and that there are other role players,” Hart maintained this week.
Hart added that he believed there had been interference from various high-level individuals in the investigation of the murder, “be it in South African Police Services or the government that are involved in this case”.
Teffo previously told the court that the eyewitness would also confirm that a meeting of senior Gauteng police officers — which reportedly included former Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) provincial head Shadrack Sibiya and former Gauteng head of safety Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane — had taken place “to hatch the plan of avoiding to say how Senzo was killed in that house”.
“If a guy who is not the lead investigator [Teffo] can see it from outside, obviously the investigator, who is a police official and has someone on the inside who can assist him get information, he should have known what to do,” Hart added.
He said it was disturbing that since 2020, Gininda had been sitting on such critical information and had not acted on it.
“A seasoned veteran like Gininda should have known how to deal with this. First, arrest all the people who were in the house and charge them as co-accused with the five accused in court.
“I think if that was done then we would have been long done with this trial,” Hart said.
The people who were in the house when Meyiwa died included Khumalo, her two minor children, her sister Zandi Khumalo, their mother Gladness Khumalo, Twala and the footballer’s close friends Mthokozisi Thwala and Tumelo Madlala.
“Having information of who is really involved in the crime, someone who is directly linked to the crime, and cellphone data also collaborated yet she is not charged — but you were so quick to charge the five guys,” Hart said.
Gininda’s affidavit further revealed conversations between Khumalo and her sister which he said showed that she was not getting on with Meyiwa and wanted to be free of him as early as 2013.
“It is clear that she hated him and wanted to get rid of him. She further states that she regrets not succeeding in getting rid of him before.
“Taking into account all these facts, an inference can be drawn that she meant killing him.
“Cellphone records show that, after the incident took place, she phoned a number of people from her phone but no call was made to emergency services,” Gininda read from the affidavit this week.
Hart said he believed the defence insisted Gininda read out his affidavit in court this week to show that he could not be trusted.
“Him withholding such information and not acting on it or following up maintains that the five accused are framed,” Hart added.
All five accused in the case have pleaded not guilty.