TWO Pietersburg rugby players convicted of murdering Northern Province teenager Tshepo Matloha received 18-year jail sentences in the Pretoria High Court on Thursday.
Judge Bernard Ngoepe recommended that Riaan Botha and Ben Korff serve at least two-thirds of their sentences before being considered for parole.
Botha, along with another rugby team mate Kobus Joubert, also received a four-year sentence for attempting to defeat the ends of justice by throwing Matloha’s body into a dam.
Botha’s two sentences are to run concurrently.
Joubert’s sentence could be altered to correctional supervision after serving an unspecified minimum period in jail.
Meanwhile, a group of youths demonstrated outside the court on Thursday in protest against the sentences.
They protestors shouted that they wanted (Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe, and threatened to take over white-owned farms in the Dendron area in the Northern Province.
Outside the court Matloha’s father, Michael Kgokolo, said: ”They should have got life sentences.”
Botha’s mother Chummy maintained her son’s innocence.
”They have taken his life from him. I hope the guy outside there who did this will have a guilty conscience.”
There were 11 Noordelikes rugby club members on the farm on March 25 last year, the day of the murder. Two of them, Francois Velloen and Corne Kloppers, were acquitted of all charges during the trial.
The State withdrew all charges against four more at the start of the trial. Another acted as State witness and the 11th man, who would have been State witness as well, was never used as such and testified in Velloen’s defence instead. – Sapa