Police have admitted they have no evidence linking two suspects to a mob that assaulted a woman and set her house alight because she was wearing a pair of pants, a packed Umlazi Magistrate’s Court heard on Wednesday.
Captain Clement Ngcobo, who was testifying during a bail application for Thulani Cele and Wiseman Mzotho, told the court under cross-examination that he had no evidence relating to malicious damage to property.
The two men appeared in the court after a second woman, Nomzumo Ngcobo, filed charges of intimidation and claimed that her home had been burnt down by the same mob that attacked another Umlazi woman, Zandile Mpanza.
The two men were earlier this week released on bail of R500 for assault, indecent assault and malicious damage to property in the case involving Mpanza.
They were charged after Mpanza was on July 22 allegedly assaulted, stripped naked and paraded through the township’s streets for wearing a pair of pants. The young woman’s house was also burnt by her attackers.
The charge of arson was withdrawn and replaced with malicious damage to property.
”Do you have any evidence to support that there was a leader and instructor of the mob [that allegedly burnt Ngcobo’s house down]? Do you have any evidence in terms of malicious damage to property?” Cele’s attorney, Abdul Karrim, asked.
Ngcobo told the court that Mzotho had been identified as being a part of the mob before the two women fled their homes.
He said he had been unable to get statements from residents in the area, known as Umlazi T-Section. ”I have tried to speak to people in the area, but they say don’t want to get involved.”
Questioned about the intimidation charges, he said he had been told that the two women were threatened three times each in 2005. They were warned not ”to wear pants and to attend meetings”.
”Are you saying that they did not go to a police station to report the intimidation until almost two years after the fact?” Karrim queried Ngcobo.
Bail
State prosecutor Mahendra Naidu had told the court that he would be opposing the bail application. However, Ngcobo said he had no grounds for opposing bail.
Naidu pointed out that in the case of Mpanza the state had not opposed bail and that since the two cases were to be merged, Cele should not be charged bail.
Magistrate Themba Masinga asked: ”Are we saying that accused number one is before court for a bail application that has already been considered by another court?”
He questioned why the state was opposing bail in the matter of Nomzumo Ngcobo and not in that of Mpanza.
He dismissed the state’s application for a member of the Commission on Gender Equality to testify, saying that it ”had no relevance to a bail hearing and would sensationalise things”.
As he left the court to decide whether to grant bail, he said to the nearly 40 African National Congress Women’s League supporters: ”By the way, you were singing beautifully. I’d like to hear that music again.”
Less than five minutes later he returned to the court room and ordered that Cele and Mzotho be released on warning, and added that the bail granted on Monday in the matter of Mpanza would be sufficient.
He said it ”would have been prudent for the state and the defence to negotiate”.
”There was no need for this bail application. Had proper procedure been followed, he would not have had to spend days in Westville Prison and we would not be listening to an application that is neither here nor there.”
There were howls of protests from the ANC Women’s League supporters and, barely minutes later outside the court buildings, heavily armed police ensured that league supporters were kept apart from about 30 people who had come out to support their ”induna”, Thulani Cele. — Sapa