With smiles from ear to ear at the guilty verdict handed down on Thursday to the killers of ”Lion Man” Nelson Chisale, the public gallery in the Phalaborwa Circuit Court tried to raise a cheer in celebration, but were stopped by Judge George Maluleke, who ordered them silent until he had left the room.
They packed the court’s public gallery, so squashed behind a cordon of uniformed crowd-control police officials, there was not even standing room for latecomers, let alone enough room to open the doors.
She was just ”really relieved”, said Fetsang Jafta, niece of Chisale, who earlier in the trial testified that she was forced to identify her uncle from the gaps between his front teeth, and handed in to the court photographs of him in happier times.
”I’m happy it’s finally over” she said after Maluleke, in a judgement lasting almost six hours, found that Mark Scott-Crossley had masterminded Chisale’s premeditated murder, committing it with the help of fellow farm-worker Simon Mathebula.
She did not particularly care about the outcome. ”I’ve travelled a long way, sitting on a hard bench every day listening to what they did to my uncle” she said.
Whether or not they went to jail, ”they are still alive”, she went on, adding she had known they were guilty ”from the beginning”.
”It doesn’t matter anymore, as long as it’s over,” she said.
Commenting on her friendly interaction with Scott-Crossley’s mother, Noreen Breeds, who attended court for the first time in the trial on Thursday, Jafta explained: ”I can’t judge her because of what her son did.”
Although under instructions from her son’s defence team -‒ and her son himself — not to comment on the judgement, Breeds said that, to the family, the judgement did not represent the end of the trial. That would come with sentencing, to be decided on in August.
”We’re not going to get weak now,” Breeds said, her adopted daughter Mags Miljo at her side. Scott-Crossley is the brother of Tracy Lee Scott-Crossley, one of six schoolgirls who disappeared in 1988 and 1989 shortly before paedophile Gert van Rooyen and his lover Joey Haarhoff committed suicide in a police chase.
Scott-Crossley faces a mandatory life sentence for the premeditated murder unless he is able to provide substantial and compelling reasons for the court to decide otherwise, said his attorney Charl van Tonder.
The defence team will now be studying a copy of the judgement to prepare to present evidence in mitigation of sentence, added Scott-Crossley’s advocate Johann Engelbrecht SC. He too said the case was ”not finished yet”.
Asked whether he intended appealing Thursday’s decision he said the possibility had not even crossed his mind yet.
Mathebula, found guilty only of murder, refused to speak after being led away to the court holding cell. Instead, he paced back and forth. His quiet wife Joina Mathebula was almost in tears outside. She too would not comment on the guilty verdict.
”These people are getting only life sentences, not for just making trouble,” said spectator Eugenia Ricuotso. The person she pitied in the whole affair was Mathebula, she said. He had three children. ”Shame, those poor kids,” she added.
”We expected it,” said Mathebula’s defence counsel. The next step would be to sit down and consult with his client, he said.
Mathebula, who sat alone and silent, with his arms folded across his chest, his head bowed, at the start of proceedings on Thursday, shook his head from side to side when the judgement against him was delivered after almost six hours of assessment and evaluation of witnesses’ testimony.
”I’m satisfied that the law has finally taken its course,” said state prosecutor Ivy Thenga.
”The truth and lies will not mix and can never mix,” she said.
The last word came from a motorist driving past the cordoned off parking lot of the court. ”What did they say?” she shouted across to spectators milling around before making their slow way home.
She punched the air at their response: ”guilty”.
The trial heard that Chisale (41) had been attacked on January 31 last year when he returned to Scott-Crossley’s farm near Hoedspruit, about 590km north of Johannesburg, to collect some belongings.
He had been fired for an alleged theft, and when he returned to pick up pots and pans he claimed belonged to him he was seized by farm workers who said they were acting on Scott-Crossley’s orders.
The victim was tied to a tree and beaten by the workers, and, witnesses told the court, the farmer. All sides agree that Scott-Crossley and Mathebula loaded Chisale into a truck and drove him about 20km to the Mokwalo White Lion Project, where they threw his body over a fence into an enclosure holding five white lions.
Robert Mnisi, who took part in beating Chisale, testified that Chisale had still been alive and that he had screamed when he was thrown over the fence.
Scott-Crossley denied hearing any sound and said he believed Chisale was dead.
Forensic evidence was contradictory. The state pathologist said the victim had been alive and was mauled to death by the lions, but a private pathologist, testifying for the defence, said it appeared Chisale had been dead before he was thrown into the enclosure.
The case was hampered because few remains of Chisale were found: a partial skull, a few bones and the tip of a finger, the print from which was used to identify the victim. Some bloodstained shreds of Chisale’s shirt and trousers were also recovered.
An earlier court decision ruled that, out of respect for Chisale’s family, they could bury his remains, even though further forensic tests were needed to determine the exact time and cause of death. – Sapa, Guardian Unlimited Â