/ 9 March 2000

CHAUKE’S LOVER WALKS FREE

DUDU Nkosi, the former girlfriend of one fo South Africa’s most wanted men, alleged cash-heist kingpin Collin Chauke, is a free woman. On Wednesday she walked out of the Nelspruit Regional Court after being given a suspended sentence. She was found not guilty of defeating the ends of justice by harbouring Chauke until he was arrested at her townhouse on January 19 last year. Before passing judgment, Magistrate Albertus le Roux asked Nkosi if her “women’s intuition” hadn’t told her that the man she knew as Max Zikhale was, in fact, Collin Chauke, an alleged cash-heist kingpin. “No,” she said. “Even the people who arrested him were not sure until they took him to Middelburg for positive identification.” Nkosi handled her own defence after spending 11 months awaiting trial because she was unable to pay a succession of lawyers who withdrew from her case.