Luyolo Mapolisa’s club search has come to an end, having signed for National First Division side FC Cape Town.

The 30-year-old winger was on the books of Golden Arrows last season, but after starting only two league games, he did not have his contract renewed.

The Khayelitsha-born player has been looking for a club since the end of the last campaign, while keeping fit on his own back in his hometown.

For more http://www.soccerladuma.com

Mamelodi Sundowns defender Tebogo Langerman has resumed training with the rest of his teammates, following his recovery from injury.

The left-back has been out of Pitso Mosimane’s team, as he was nursing the groin injury he sustained in the 1-1 draw against Platinum Stars.

The 27-year-old told the Siya crew that he is waiting the go ahead from the club’s medical team, allowing him back to competitive action.

For more http://www.soccerladuma.

ABSA Premiership

Mbombela – A farm worker convicted of killing a Mpumalanga farmer in 2010 was sentenced to 43 years in prison by the Nelspruit Circuit of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Friday.

In passing sentence, Judge Mmonoa Teffo described Aaron Majawodwa Nkosi as a very violent man, who had a previous conviction for assault for which he served six months in 2005, a Sapa correspondent reported.

Nkosi was found guilty of robbing and kidnapping Güdryn Schoeman, 70, and murdering her husband Johannes Hendrik Tolstoi Schoeman, 86, at their home at Vygeboom Farm near Badplaas on 17 December 2010.

Teffo said Nkosi and his co-accused, who was acquitted, lived and grew up on the same farm.

“They knew the Schoemans very well… [the] act was perpetrated by greed and personal gain. The deceased was a defenceless elderly citizen and didn’t resist.

“The same applied to his wife. She submitted to their commands and they took advantage of the situation.”

Teffo also clarified that Nkosi was 27-years-old, not 30 as reflected on the charge sheet.

Teffo told Nkosi that because of his criminal acts, many people could lose jobs at the farm.

“You were working as a farm labourer at the time and earned R1 500 a month. There was nothing to force you to commit the crime.”

Nkosi’s actions had traumatised Güdryn Schoeman, Teffo said.

“You maintained your innocence during the entire trial and never showed any remorse.”

Courts were expected to send a message to prospective criminals that barbaric conduct was not welcome in society.

Teffo sentenced Nkosi to life imprisonment for the murder, 15 years for robbery, and three years for kidnapping.

The sentences would run consecutively, adding up to a total of 43 years.

Nkosi’s co-accused, Thomas Johannes Nyathi, 30, was acquitted, despite his blood being found in the car used to abduct the farmer’s wife, which they crashed on the night of the murder.

Although the blood samples matched Nyathi’s, the State had failed to prove its case against him.

Recounting the events

Teffo recounted the events of 17 December 2010, when two men entered the Schoemans’s house in the middle of the night.

Armed with a knife and a panga, the men attacked the farmer in his bedroom.

His wife, who slept on the second floor of the house, awoke to the smell of burning plastic.

“As she went to check if the stove was left on, she heard her husband snoring heavily but strangely.

“As she entered her husband’s room to check, she was attacked and her mouth closed,” Teffo told the court.

The men demanded money and weapons and when they found nothing, she agreed to withdraw cash from an ATM.

“They drove with her to a Belfast ATM where R2 000 was withdrawn, leaving her husband dead on the floor,” Teffo said.

“Before they left, the accused took a tracksuit top, put it around his [Schoeman’s] neck, pulled it tight and strangled him to death,” the judge said.

Teffo said the farmer was left on the floor next to the bed with his hands and feet tied.

Post-mortem results indicated that Schoeman died of strangulation.

The judge said that after withdrawing the money, they went to Middelburg but were involved in an accident on the R33 Carolina road.

Two young constables from Carolina police station rescued the woman.

They alerted Badplaas police and asked them to go to the farm.

On Wednesday, Güdryn Schoeman presented Nkosi with a Bible and advised him to seek Jesus Christ.

– SAPA

Mbombela – The case against a Mpumalanga traffic deputy chief accused of shooting a woman dead, was postponed in the Nelspruit Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

According to a Sapa correspondent, Cornelius Heunis, 57, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Michelle Curgenven, 36, during his brief appearance.

Curgenven was found dead inside her Land Rover Freelander in July this year.

She was an administration clerk at the Mbombela local municipality.

Heunis was arrested at Curgenven’s house on 5 July and allegedly threatened to commit suicide when police arrived.

“When police wanted to come in he threatened to shoot himself with a 9mm pistol,” police spokesperson Leonard Hlathi said.

Heunis is out on R20 000 bail.

The case was postponed to 21 November after the State asked that police be given more time to investigate.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The protection of state information bill needs a complete overhaul, according to the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac).

“The bill must be scrapped in its entirety because it is fatally flawed. The process must be started afresh to develop a piece of legislation that legitimately protects state secrets, [and does not]… unnecessarily infringe on rights of access to information that are protected by the Constitution,” chairperson Sipho Pityana said in a statement on Friday.

Casac believed other problems posed by the bill would not be placed under the microscope, as President Jacob Zuma only highlighted two sections that needed serious attention.

“Parliament will be limited to a review of the two clauses that the president has highlighted, clauses 45 and [42]. The rules of Parliament prevent a consideration of any other parts of the bill,” Pityana said.

Casac said Zuma’s silence on why he singled out the two clauses raised questions on whether he intended to weaken the limited protections offered by these clauses.

“Even if the intention is to strengthen these clauses, tinkering with them will not render the bill constitutionally compliant.”

Zuma referred the bill back to the national assembly on Thursday.

He said he would not sign it into law because it was incoherently drafted and, therefore, unconstitutional.

Zuma mentioned section 45, which in its current form criminalises the improper classification of state information and provides for prison sentences of five to 15 years, depending on the level of wrongful classification.

It notably makes it a crime to classify information to conceal corruption or influence a tender process.

Section 42 purports to deal with failure to report possession of a classified document but refers back to an earlier section that sets out the maximum classification period, as stipulated in the National Archives Act.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – Convicted murderer Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye’s health came under the spotlight on Friday in the Protea Magistrate’s Court where his legal team is again trying to secure bail for the hip hop star.

Rudi Krause said his client had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and presented this as part of the appeal.

However, correctional services health officials dismissed the reports and said tests were conducted which gave him a clean bill of health.

This is Maarohanye’s third appeal for bail since his conviction last October.

He and co-accused Themba Tshabalala were drag-racing in Protea North on March 8, 2010, when they crashed into a group of schoolboys. Prince Mohube, Mlungisi Cwayi, Andile Mthombeni, and Phomello Masemola were killed. Frank Mlambo and Fumani Mushwana were left permanently brain damaged.

In December last year, Maarohanye and Tshabalala were each sentenced to 25 years in jail.

The two were each sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for murder and four years imprisonment for attempted murder.

For use of drugs, driving under the influence of drugs, and racing on a public road, they got a year for each count, to run concurrently.

On Friday, Johannesburg Prison chief nursing officer Vusi Mazibuko testified that tests did not indicate that Maarohanye was infected with TB.

“We ran a test through the laboratory and the results were negative.”

He said had there been doubt about Maarohanye’s health his cell mate would have been tested as well, and treatment would have been given to both of them.

During cross-examination, Krause asked why a nurse would cast doubt on a doctor’s diagnosis.

Mazibuko said the doctor never performed tests to prove whether he was indeed suffering from the disease.

Asked if there was a possibility Maarohanye could be suffering from something else, he maintained that tests would have revealed this.

Krause asked the head of the prison, Sam Mabothoma, why his client had not seen a doctor since February.

Mabothoma told the court he was still waiting to hear from the family after he had given them a quote to accompany Maarohanye to a doctor of his choice.

Krause asked why he had to be accompanied by 10 officials to a medical facility that was across the street from the prison, resulting in the quotation being R5 000.

“We got a classification that he was a maximum (security) prisoner and certain factors had to be considered. If I have to send him out, I need to look at security and that is how I got to the number of members,” he said.

Asked if he did not think charging the family such an amount to see a doctor amounted to refusal, Mabothoma defended his decision by saying the family failed to communicate with him to make arrangements. They had turned to their lawyers instead. – Sapa

Johannesburg – Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi will challenge his suspension from the trade union federation in the High Court in Johannesburg.

“The papers, applying for me to be added as an interested party as an applicant in the case of Numsa versus Cosatu, were filed in court and served to all the attorneys of the relevant parties in the matter at noon today,” Vavi said in a statement on Friday.

“In addition to joining the case, albeit for different reasons to those advanced by Numsa, I’ve also asked for immediate relief in my papers.”

Vavi said he was asking the court to grant him an interim order interdicting and restraining the Congress of SA Trade Unions from enforcing any decision taken at its central executive committee last month. He also wanted final relief to review and set aside the decision to suspend him and institute disciplinary proceedings.

“Having spent the bulk of my life, 15 years in the congress movement and 12 of these as Cosatu general secretary, I have taken this extraordinary decision with a heavy heart,” Vavi said.

“Never did it cross my mind that one day I will be left with no choice but to use courts of law to defend my rights against an organisation I have dedicated my whole adult life building,” he said.

Last month, Cosatu announced that Vavi had been put on special leave pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing relating to an affair he had with a junior employee.

In July, the employee accused him of rape. He said he had a consensual affair with her. The woman subsequently withdrew a sexual harassment complaint against him.

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), an ally of Vavi, is challenging his suspension in the high court.

The Food and Allied Workers’ Union and SA Football Players’ Union are co-applicants.

On Tuesday, Numsa’s application was postponed after the high court allowed an application by seven opposing unions to intervene.

The intervening unions are the National Union of Mineworkers, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, the SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, the Finance Union, and the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union.

The are all Cosatu affiliates, and are opposing Numsa’s application.

Numsa is expected to file an opposing affidavit by October 2. – Sapa

The High Court in Pretoria denied convicted killer Johan Kotze and his three co-accused leave to appeal on Friday.

Dismissing applications by Kotze, Andries Sithole, Pieta Mohlake and Sello Mphaka for leave to appeal against their convictions, Judge Bert Bam said there was no prospect of success on appeal.

Two months ago, Bam sentenced Kotze and Sithole to two life sentences each for murdering Kotze’s 19-year-old stepson Conrad Bonette and raping Kotze’s estranged wife Ina Bonette.

Mohlake and Mphaka were also sentenced to life imprisonment for gang raping Bonette.

Kotze was sentenced to an additional 25 years imprisonment and the other three to an extra 18 years imprisonment for kidnapping and seriously assaulting Bonette.

The attacks on Bonette and her son happened at Kotze’s house in Modimolle on January 3, 2012.

Piet Greyling, for Kotze, on Friday attacked Bonette’s evidence, saying that she had “exaggerated” what happened to her, had lied on the witness stand and was not a credible witness.

He said if her evidence fell away, Kotze’s evidence became more credible, which cleared the way for another court accepting clinical psychologist Tertia Spangenberg’s evidence.

He argued that the court should have accepted the evidence of Bonette’s former husband and an article in the magazine Huisgenoot as proof that Bonette had not told the full truth to the court, as her initial versions differed from her evidence under oath.

He argued that Kotze’s mental condition should have been taken into account as mitigation when it came to sentencing.

Jan van Rooyen, for Sithole, said the accused’s convictions stood and fell on the evidence of Bonette, who was a single witness and whose evidence was not supported by DNA or even the medical evidence.

He said Sithole had not even known Conrad Bonette, had no motive to kill him and that another court might conclude that Sithole should not have been convicted of the murder.

Francois van As, for Mohlake and Mphaka, argued that “red lights” should have flickered about the reliability of Bonette’s evidence, but Bam said he had never seen any red lights.

Van As said the fact that Bonette had begged his clients for help showed that she had not been afraid of them, which supported their version that they were not willing participants.

Van Rooyen and Van As both argued that there were factors which could lead another court to impose less sentences.

Bam said he was still convinced that the evidence against the accused was overwhelming and that there was no chance that another court would find that the accused’s versions were reasonably true.

He was also still of the opinion that the sentences were fitting under the circumstances and found that there was no reasonable prospect that another court would interfere.

Bam described Kotze as “inherently evil” when he convicted him and said he and the others had shown no remorse for what they did.

Bonette testified that Kotze had sexually tortured her and cut off her nipples while the other three looked on before they took turns to rape her.

While she lay helplessly gagged and tied to a bed, she was forced to listen to her son begging Kotze for his life before he was shot to death.

Kotze claimed he could not remember and could not be held accountable for his actions that day.

His co-accused claimed Kotze had forced them at gunpoint to co-operate and that they had only pretended to rape Bonette because they could not get erections. – Sapa