Defence advocate Sipho Ramosepele
Defence advocate Sipho Ramosepele on Monday dismissed allegations made by Sergeant Vusimuzi Mogane, a state witness in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial, that his client was found with a cell phone in his holding cell in Valeria police station in Tshwane.
The trial of five men for the October 2014 murder of the Bafana Bafana captain resumed in the Pretoria high court on Monday after a three-week hiatus.
Mogane returned to the stand after testifying last year during the trial within a trial to determine whether confessions made by Bongani Ntanzi and Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya were admissible.
Sibiya and Ntanzi, as well as Mthobisi Mncube, Mthokoziseni Maphisa and Fisokuhle Ntuli, are accused of killing Meyiwa at the home of his girlfriend, Kelly Khumalo, in Vosloorus, Gauteng, on 26 October 2014.
On Monday, Mogane told the court that, in February 2021, the late Sergeant Steven Mabena called him and requested that they meet at Valeria police station, where Ntanzi was being held. Upon arrival, they told police officers they wanted to visit Ntanzi’s cell.
“They accompanied us there and opened. On our arrival, we found out accused two [Ntanzi] had a cell phone while in custody. He showed us the phone as it was in his blankets. We took the cell phone and placed it in exhibit bags and left with it,” Mogane said.
But Ramosepele dismissed Mogane’s allegations, saying that when his client was arrested his two phones and identity document were confiscated by Mogane and Mabena.
“Accused number two will also deny that a cell phone was seized from him in his prison cell and sealed. It is unfortunate that Mabena is not here to answer for himself but is it possible he seized accused two’s two cell phones and ID?” Ramosepele asked.
Mogane responded: “I will not be able to speak for him but the truth is that we did find a cell phone in his cell. I am not surprised that he is denying this, because he has been denying everything.
“Accused two will tell this court that at all police stations, including Valeria, he was held in isolation. As a result of being held in isolation, he could not call his relatives. They only knew on the 13 of July [2020] that he was arrested,” Ramosepele said.
He said finding a cell phone on an accused person was an offence, and queried why, if that had been the case, his client was not charged. Given that Ntanzi is a suspect in a high-profile case and could have been in contact with others, he should have been charged if really found with a phone, Ramosepele stressed.
In response, Mogane said: “According to our investigations, we do not just rush to arrest or charge a person for that. That is why we took that cell phone to the downloader to see what it has and who he could have been speaking to.”
The officer told the court that the phone was taken to the Middleburg office of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) office in Mpumalanga because Colonel Lambertus Steyn, who is an analyst and investigating officer at the SA Police Service Cold Case Unit, but he was unavailable that week.
Mogane added that the fifth accused, Ntuli, was found with a cell phone at the Qalakabusha Correctional Services facility in Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal.
He said a senior prison official, Sibusiso Yaka, had called lead investigator Brigadier Bongani Gininda and told him that the cell phone had been confiscated.
“He gave us that small Stylo cell phone. We placed it in the exhibit bag and we sealed it in front of Mr Yaka,” Mogane said. The next day he then took the cell phone to Steyn.
In July last year, Steyn took the stand as the state’s fourth witness and told the court that his analysis showed that Kelly Khumalo received calls from Ntuli. Steyn said the first call “lasted almost two minutes and the second was just more than a minute”.
Steyn assessed the cell phone data records of all the people who were in the Vosloorus house on the night of the murder and found that some data had been deleted from Khumalo’s phone after Meyiwa died, and there had been communication between the five accused.
The defence had been expected to call ballistics expert Chris Mangena back to the stand for cross-examination, but state prosecutor George Baloyi told the court that the defence would not continue with this because it was still awaiting the response of the legal aid board on an application to partially fund the services of its own expert.
Last year, Mangena, who also reconstructed the Oscar Pistorius murder scene in 2013, took the stand and said he went to the Khumalo house on Monday, 27 October 2014, a day after Meyiwa was killed. He said his reconstruction of the scene showed that two shots were fired in the house. The first shot hit the tiled floor at a 90-degree angle and anyone nearby could have been hit by a bullet fragment.
The defence did not cross-examine Mangena at the time, saying it wanted to bring in its own ballistics expert to look at his evidence.
On Monday, defence lawyers said the accused were unable to pay the full amount charged by the expert and were now waiting to see if Legal Aid would fund the remainder of the payment.
Judge Ratha Mokgoathleng expressed his dissatisfaction, saying: “What surprises me is that the ballistics expert testified in August last year and the matter was postponed for consultation because your expert was committed elsewhere. It has been eight months.”
The judge said the state should call the head of the legal board to court to clarify whether it would provide the finance.