Mark Scott-Crossley’s R250 000 bail could be revoked for allegedly grabbing a witness’s T-shirt and muttering to him at the close of proceedings on the second day of his trial for allegedly feeding former employee Nelson Chisale (41) to lions in January last year.
Set down to start at 9.30am on Wednesday, the third day of the trial had not yet begun when the judge’s clerk announced to a packed gallery that the case would go ahead only at 11am.
It is understood this was to give counsel for Scott-Crossley and his co-accused — Richard ”Doctor” Mathebula (41) and Simon Mathebula (43), no relation — time to consult their clients and to provide the police with an opportunity to take statements about Tuesday’s incident.
Although not yet confirmed, it is believed the prosecution intends applying to revoke Scott-Crossley’s bail, granted on January 2 after the denial of several previous applications for bail. The Mathebulas remain in custody.
Scott-Crossley has spent most of the past year in the Nelspruit police station’s cells, where he was moved from Nelspruit prison after eight masked men allegedly robbed and assaulted him in a communal cell, amid suggestions that the murder may have been racially motivated.
”This is taking too long. I’m out of here,” he joked as he left the courtroom on Tuesday for an inspection in loco of his bakkie — on to which the bleeding Chisale was allegedly loaded before being tossed over the fence of Mokwalo White Lion Project, in Hoedspruit, east of Phalaborwa, on January 31 2004.
It was some time after this that he allegedly grabbed the red T-shirt of Forget Tsako Ndlovu (19), who had spent all day in the witness box being grilled about what he saw and was told the day of the killing.
Ndlovu testified that Simon Mathebula had come to him, his sleeves and hat splattered with blood, and told him he and Richard had assaulted Chisale, but that they had just been ”playing” with him.
He did not ”think deeper” into what Simon had meant by the statement, but when Simon drew his hand across his throat to demonstrate how they had played with him, ”I said to myself that this is not a sign of playing with somebody”, Ndlovu told the court.
In the hours before his death, Chisale was allegedly beaten with pangas and tied to a tree before being shoved to the ground where his head was trampled and he was threatened with a rifle. He was then loaded on to the back of a bakkie and tossed over a fence to lions in a 20ha encampment.
It was not known what Scott-Crossley muttered to Ndlovu during the commotion at the close of proceedings on Tuesday.
Ndlovu was expected to go into the witness box again on Wednesday for re-examination after his grilling on Tuesday — which went on a lot longer than state prosecutor Ivy Tsenga anticipated.
She had hoped to be well into the evidence of specialist police investigators by Wednesday.
As things stood, she would probably call the women who saw Chisale leave home the day of his death and later reported him missing.
Chisale’s sister, Johanna, has attended each day of the proceedings so far. Her heart ached just looking at the accused in the dock, she said on the first day of the trial.
While she did not want to comment further on Wednesday — particularly about a photograph of her brother’s remains that appeared on the front page of Beeld newspaper — she was prepared to disclose that she had travelled to Phalaborwa especially for the case, all the way from her home in Pretoria.
Chisale’s remains were buried at his birthplace at Maboloka village, in Brits, North West, in March. — Sapa