When the murder trial of two men accused of throwing a fellow worker to lions resumes in the Phalaborwa Circuit Court on Tuesday, the speaker of the Limpopo legislature will attend.
Limpopo speaker Tshenuani Farisani and his office manager, Dick Ralushayi, will take their seats immediately behind the dock.
They queued for their seats from early morning, and went through a metal-detector at the gates with the rest of the crowd that has packed the public gallery since the trial began on February 4.
”I am one of the more than 80 citizens in this court. Once in a while I do attend,” Farisani said.
”Parliament makes laws, and our judicial system applies and interprets those laws and promotes good governance and justice. As a good citizen, as a Limpopo citizen, I share the interests of everybody in the execution of the separated powers of our democratic government.”
Asked whether he was attending the trial in his official or personal capacity, Farisani said he was there as a citizen, but added: ”I cannot run away from the fact that I am the speaker of the Limpopo legislature.”
Although due to start at 9am on Tuesday, the trial had not yet begun by 10am.
Judge George Maluleke, hearing the case with assessors Kate Choshi and Elphus Seemela, has set the matter down for the rest of the week to hear the closing arguments of the state and defence teams.
When he last adjourned the matter, in early March, he instructed that written heads of argument be filed by the state by March 22 and by the defence teams for both accused by April 4.
Mark Scott-Crossley (37) and Simon Mathebula (43) have pleaded not guilty to murdering Nelson Chisale on January 31 last year when he was assaulted with a panga and then thrown to lions in an encampment at the Mokwalo White Lion Project in Hoedspruit. They remain in custody.
The trial of a third accused, Richard Mathebula (41), was separated from theirs after he was admitted to hospital for treatment of suspected tuberculosis. Charges against a fourth accused, Robert Mnisi, were withdrawn when he turned state witness.
In evidence earlier in the trial, the court heard that all that was found of Chisale in the encampment was a shaft of long bones, a skull with no mandible, fragments of rib, vertebrae, a pelvic girdle and a finger, his shredded shirt and ripped pair of khaki trousers.
Chisale’s remains were buried at his birthplace at Maboloka village, in Brits, North West, last March. A court ruled that the dignity of his family outweighed the right of his alleged killers to a fair trial, following an urgent application by the defence to stop the funeral to enable a forensic pathologist to perform tests on his bones to determine the time and cause of death. — Sapa