Curious South African pensioner Mervyn Kelly was just as disappointed as the assembled media to be told by the court that the case involving the three men accused of murdering Swedish honeymooner Anni Dewani in Cape Town was on Monday remanded until December 6.
Magistrate Jackie Redelinghuys said the case was being postponed for further investigation, but no further details about what happened on the fatal night of November 13 were revealed in the Wynberg regional court.
The court was told that the taxi driver, Zola Tongo (31) who drove newlyweds Anni Dewani and her new husband Shrien on the night of the murder, is still in the process of negotiating a plea bargain with the state.
ID parade
His lawyer William Da Grass told the M&G that Tongo was picked out from a line-up at an identification parade at the Manenberg police station on Saturday.
The witnesses were apparently two Cape Town residents who had seen the men. Their faces were covered as they entered and left the police station at the weekend.
The two other accused, Xolile Mngeni (23) and Mzwamadoda Qwabe (26) stood beside Tongo in court this morning.
Noise outside the packed courtroom made what the legal representatives of the accused were saying inaudible, and a foreign journalist shouted out twice in frustration in court: “We can’t hear anything.”
Redlinghuys asked for those speaking in court to be removed and the Mail and Guardian was later informed by a clerk of the court that the journalist had not been asked to leave the courtroom because he was new to the country and did not understand its laws.
The court was packed with foreign and local journalists, the curious, and family and friends of the accused, who made furtive eye contact with the accused when they were led back down to the holding cells.
A frustrated Kelly shook his head as he got up to leave the court.
“My wife and I came all this way again for nothing,” said Kelly, who was drawn to this case because it involved the unusual murder of a foreigner. “Why does this case keep getting postponed?”
World horrified at murder
The story of the tourist murdered on her honeymoon in Cape Town has horrified the world and brought fresh focus on the high crime rate in South Africa.
Two days after arriving in Cape Town, Shrien Dewani claimed their taxi was hijacked by two armed men when they took a late-night detour through Gugulethu two weeks ago.
Questions around the murder have continued to baffle Capetonians, who ask why the newlyweds would travel to Gugulethu late at night. Most Gugulethu locals don’t go out after dark in the township, and its celebrated restaurant Mzoli’s closes at 7pm because of the high crime in the area.
Shrien Dewani, a 30-year-old chartered accountant, flew out of Cape Town four days after his wife’s body was found in Khayelitsha with a single bullet wound to the head.
While the Saturday Argus claimed he had returned to Cape Town, Dewani’s newly-appointed spokesperson Max Clifford and his Johannesburg-based lawyer Billy Gundelfinger denied he had left the United Kingdom. Both said he was at home in Britol, heavily sedated and in mourning.