OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 9.30pm.
CAPE Town magistrate Johan Venter, presiding over the inquest over the 1996 lynching of Hard Livings gang co-leader Rashaad Staggie on Friday warned the media against prejudicing or pre-empting inquest findings.
Venter’s statement was in reaction to negative media reaction to an announcement by Advocate Willie Viljoen on Tuesday that video and photographic material taken by reporters who witnessed the murder of the gangster by a mob will be subpoenaed by the inquest.
The subpoenas, in terms of the Inquests Act of 1959, will force editors to hand over to the court photographs, video footage and transcripts pertaining to meetings, gatherings and demonstrations held by vigilante group People against Gangsterism and Drugs before Staggie’s lynching, as well as of the events on the night Staggie was shot and set alight.
Venter said it seems that Cape newspapers have erroneously printed their interpretation that the subpoenas were ordered by the attorney-general, when in fact they were issued on his own instructions. He stressed the presiding officer is in charge of inquest proceedings, and not the attorney-general.
Testifying before the inquiry on Friday, Western Cape head of intelligence police Senior-Superintendent Jeremy Veary said there had been nothing sinister in his approach to a reporter for information because he had considered the reporter an ordinary citizen.