NTINI SENTENCED ON FRIDAY

THE East London magistrate’s court will on Friday pass sentence on former national pace bowler Makhaya Ntini, who was in April convicted of rape. A mandatory ten-year jail sentence for rape in terms of new laws would signal the end of his meteoric rise to stardom from a rural townships outside King William’s Town. Ntini’s defence council Ben Ford on Thursday called four witnesses in mitigation of sentence in an attempt to show why the court should impose correctional supervision instead of a ten year sentence. Ntini was found guilty of raping a 22-year-old woman in a toilet at East London’s Buffalo Park cricket ground after giving her a lift in his car.