The five people on trial — Ncube, Bongani Ntanzi, Mthokozisi Maphisa, Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya and Fisokuhle Ntuli — have pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, illegal possession of a firearm and the illegal possession of ammunition. (Gallo Images/OJ Koloti)
Cellphone data expert and state witness Gideon Gouws testified that analysis of phone calls and text messages showed that the five men accused of Senzo Meyiwa’s murder knew each other, despite their claims to the contrary.
In the Pretoria high court on Wednesday, Gouws was the second state expert to state that phone records linked the accused, after Colonel Lambertus Steyn testified in July that the five communicated with each other and singer Kelly Khumalo, Meyiwa’s girlfriend, before and after the Bafana Bafana captain’s 26 October 2014 murder.
He was killed at Khumalo’s Vosloorus, Gauteng, family home in what the state initially claimed was a botched robbery.
The five people on trial — Bongani Ntanzi, Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya, Mthobisi Mncube, Mthokozisi Maphisa and Fisokuhle Ntuli — have pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, illegal possession of a firearm and the illegal possession of ammunition.
In March, the state tasked Christopher Matlou, a Road Traffic Management Corporation investigator, with finding information about the accused on the Electronic National Administration Traffic Information System (eNaTIS).
During his March testimony, Matlou said he found that four of the five had communicated with each other, contradicting claims that they did not know each other before their 2020 arrests.
Moreover, on Monday, Sergeant Vusimuzi Mogane told the court that the fifth accused, Ntuli, was found with a cellphone at the Qalakabusha Correctional Services facility in Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal.
He said senior prison official Sibusiso Yaka had called lead investigator Brigadier Bongani Gininda to tell him he had confiscated the phone. Mogane added that the second accused, Ntanzi, was also found with a cellphone at the Valeria police station in Tshwane, where he was detained after his June 2020 arrest.
On Wednesday, Gouws testified: “There was communication between Fisokuhle Ntuli or Lungisani and Bongani Ntanzi. Then there is Mthokoziseni Maphisa with a phone that was a Huawei cellphone identified at Leeuwkop Prison.
He added: “Then there was Mthobisi Mncube. It shows there was communication between all the accused before the court. These are all the numbers that show there was communication …”
He added that two Vodacom SIM cards had been extracted. No data was found on the first card, but on the second one, investigators identified deleted messages and numbers as Ntuli’s.
“The Vodacom SIM card had two common contacts belonging to two other accused, one saved as ‘Reggae’ [Mncube] and another number found of Maphisa,” Gouws said.
The analyst also took the court through the pictures he had found on Ntanzi’s phone.
“You can see there is a picture and it is written, ‘Bongani loves Lebo.’ Then there is a picture of the article about this case. The article reads, ‘Imibuzo abasolwa bezihlangula ngokufa kuka Meyiwa’ [Questions remain about the murder of Meyiwa],” Gouws testified.
He was also able to extract deleted pictures of a firearm from Ntanzi’s phone.
To support Gouws’s testimony, state prosecutor George Baloyi said an official from Vodacom would be called to take the stand and give evidence allegedly linking the accused.
The trial continues on Thursday.