ERIKA DE BEER, Pretoria | Saturday
TWO Pietersburg rugby players convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Tshepo Matloha in the Pretoria High Court on Friday knew their actions could kill him, the judge found.
Three other accused were acquitted.
Former Noordelikes Rugby Club first team captain Riaan Botha trampled on Matloha’s head, and Ben Korff jumped onto his chest, said Judge Bernard Ngoepe.
Both the head and chest were vital organs.
”They must have been aware that the deceased could die,” Ngoepe told a packed courtroom, where swear words were uttered in the jostling for seats.
The court heard that Botha caught Matloha and his two friends Alex and Melford Motlokwana poaching on Botha’s mother’s game farm near Dendron on March 25 last year.
Francois Velloen, one of the three acquitted, testified Botha had trampled on Matloha’s head several times while the youth was lying on the ground. Botha denied this, saying he had only grabbed him, pushed him to the ground and stepped on his arm to subdue him.
Ngoepe said: ”(Botha’s) description of the manner of arrest… is simply irreconcilable with the deceased’s condition immediately thereafter.”
Matloha had to be carried to a nearby bakkie.
Some of the accused deliberately misrepresented the condition of the deceased, possibly to escape the consequences, Ngoepe said.
Ngoepe said Botha had not told the court the truth.
When the court went to the farm to inspect the scene — at Botha’s request — Botha could not exactly point out where he had apprehended Matloha, where he had left him and where he found him dead the following day.
”One would have thought that for years to come, perhaps down generations… if you have once removed a corpse from a farm you know very well, you would be able to locate that point with accurate precision. One would think you would be able to show it to your children, even your grandchildren, 20 years down the line.”
”(Botha), not even a year down the line, could not recall it,” Ngoepe said.
”The court gets the impression he was very angry and decided to take the law into his own hands.”
The judge expressed reservations about Korff’s evidence that Botha had kicked or trampled on Matloha’s chest, given Korff’s contradictory statements in that regard.
State witness Louis Strydom’s evidence that Korff had jumped onto Matloha’s body was credible, said Ngoepe. There was no other reasonable explanation of how the deceased’s ribs — on both sides of his body — could have been broken.
Although none of the other witnesses supported Strydom, they did not say how it could have happened either, and none of them were with Matloha all the time.
Ngoepe said that even though there might be some doubt that Botha and Korff had the direct intention to cause Matloha’s death, they should at the very least have foreseen that he could have died.
”The condition of the deceased as he was left there was quite grave and he was very seriously injured, as anybody who cared could see.”
Korff jumped onto the chest of someone who was clearly already injured.
Ngoepe said at one stage he thought of distinguishing Korff from Botha because of that.
”(Korff) really intended to finish him off.”
But he said he would give Korff the benefit of the doubt. They left Matloha without medical help on a fenced, private farm where no good Samaritan would even stumble upon him.
Ngoepe said he was not impressed with Botha’s version that he had left Matloha in the shade.
”The court doesn’t understand where such a sudden surge of compassion emerged from.”
The State argued that Velloen, Kobus Joubert and Corne Kloppers were also guilty of murder because they had a common purpose with the others to kill Matloha.
But Ngoepe said the State had not met the law’s requirement of proof.
”There is no evidence of a prior agreement among these people to kill.”
He convicted Botha and Joubert of attempting to defeat the ends of justice for throwing Matloha’s body into a dam, from where it was retrieved about a week later.
”They knew their purpose was to cause real evidence to disappear.”
They even tied a piece of heavy metal to the body to ensure that it was lost forever.
The judge found all five not guilty on the two attempted murder charges of Alex and Melford Motlokwana. He gave the accused the benefit of the doubt that they had not seen the two on the farm.
Botha was also acquitted on a charge of malicious damage to property, which related to the killing of five dogs. Botha was entitled to protect the game on the farm, Ngoepe found.
Sentence proceedings are to start on April 30.
The African National Congress Youth League welcomed the verdict ”despite the fact that only two of the accused were found guilty”. Ancyl representative Khulekani Ntshangase said: ”We had hoped that all those implicated in this gruesome murder were to be found guilty. The people of South Africa and its youth in particular… will await the sentencing.
”The youth of this country will be happy if they get a maximum sentence as a lesson to all other racists who continue to see themselves as above the law. This case must serve as a lesson that racism does not pay,” he said. – Sapa