Graaff Reinet – Three youths and two men were sentenced for murder by the Graaff Reinet High Court on Friday, Eastern Cape police said.

A 16-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 15-year-old were jailed for in effect 10 years each, said Captain Rochelle Carelse.

Ricardo Lomberg, 19, was jailed for in effect 20 years, and Nantheniel Blouw, 22, was sentenced to life plus 41 years in jail.

The five broke into a house on a farm near Graaff Reinet in August. The farm owner was stabbed 21 times and his wife was stabbed 11 times and hit over the head with a bottle, said Carelse.

The group fled with six firearms, a vehicle and household items.

They were arrested two days later at a roadblock in Knysna, after a shoot-out with the police.

Sapa

Johannesburg – A woman accused of falsely claiming her baby was kidnapped was granted bail of R3000 by the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court on Friday, police said.

Busi Nkosi was charged with perjury and defeating the ends of justice, and would appear again in court on November 22, said Lt-Col Katlego Mogale.

On Monday, 42-year-old Nkosi reported her baby boy had been kidnapped in a robbery in Kempton Park.

It was initially reported that three men and two women broke into a house in Kempton Park West on Monday evening, tied up Nkosi and her 16-year-old daughter, and drugged them.

Police said the robbers were reported to have taken the baby, its clothes and Nkosi’s cellphone.

The father arrived home after 10pm and untied his wife and daughter.

Police found no signs of forced entry.

“Through investigation, the police managed to trace the child and found him with his mother in Witbank 1/8in Mpumalanga 3/8,” said Mogale.

Sapa

Johannesburg – A man who confessed to assaulting and setting alight his friend Kirsty Theologo in an apparent satanic ritual said he was testifying for her, the High Court in Johannesburg, sitting in Palm Ridge, heard on Friday.

“From the very beginning, we (he and his co-accused) confessed. We turned ourselves in to the police, so I won’t be standing here trying to defend myself or lie to the court,” said Linden Wagner.
For more http://www.iol.co.za

Cape Town – Two teenagers accused of killing Cape Town schoolboy Glenrico Martin made their first appearance at a pre-trial conference in the Western Cape High Court on Friday.

The purpose of pre-trial conferences is to ensure no technical hitches delay proceedings when the actual trials commence in the high court.

Wilston Stoffels, 18, and Jevon Snyman, 19, appeared before Judge Robert Henney, who postponed the matter to November 8, when they will appear at a second pre-trial conference. They remain in custody.

Russell Cloete, representing Legal Aid SA, told the court that a legal aid advocate had yet to be allocated to represent Stoffels.

He said the Western Cape branch of Legal Aid SA had “numerous challenges” which had not yet been resolved.

He said several criminal cases were pending in the high court, all with multiple accused who each required legal aid representation.

He said the legal aid problems which had to be resolved did not affect Snyman, who was represented by privately-funded attorney William da Grass.

The two abandoned their bail applications before the case was transferred from the Wynberg District Court, in Cape Town, to the high court.

Martin, 18, was shot on Wednesday, May 15 while entering the Spes Bona Secondary School premises in Athlone, on the Cape Flats.

At the time, Captain Frederick van Wyk said three men Ä two of them armed Ä wearing school tracksuit tops, approached Martin. One of them shot him in the head.

Paramedics revived him and took him to the Groote Schuur Hospital where he died soon after arrival.

Snyman was arrested in Athlone the next day and Stoffels was arrested in Bonteheuwel the day after that.

Sapa

Pretoria – A farmer and his son were acquitted by the High Court in Pretoria on Friday of killing two men nine years ago, SABC reported.

The bodies of Morris Morua, 36, and Zacharia Leso, 34, were found on Douw de Beer’s game farm in the North West after they were shot for allegedly hunting illegally.

The SABC reported that De Beer and his son Dylan were found guilty of defeating the course of justice and cellphone theft.

The judgment reportedly shocked Morua and Leso’s families.

“My feeling is that this judgment is very much unfair… they murdered them,” Morua’s father Thomas Maragela was quoted as saying.

“They say they shot in self-defence. How do we know that?”

According to the broadcaster, he said there was no proof because no post mortem could be done.

In 2011, Captain Nick Pitsoane, the investigating officer, testified that the only human remains found on the farm, near Boschkop, in April 2004 were 10 small bones.

Sapa

Johannesburg – A man suspected of raping a mentally ill woman in Soweto was arrested on Friday, Gauteng police said.

The man had been on the run since Sunday after allegedly raping the woman, Warrant Officer Kay Makhubela said.

“The man was with the woman’s nephew at a shebeen on Saturday night and left the shebeen while drunk,” Makhubela said.

The nephew, knowing that his friend was going to his aunt’s house in Zola, left the shebeen shortly afterwards.

“He found his friend on top of his aunt and had a fight with him.”

The man ran away. The police were notified and a case of rape was opened.

The woman was taken for medical attention.

The man will appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court once he is formally charged.

Sapa

Bhisho – An agreement was reached between an Eastern Cape pupil, her school and the basic education department over poor conditions at the institution, Equal Education (EE) said on Friday.

“A settlement agreement signed by the parties on the 12th of August 2013 and made into an order of the Bhisho High Court today (Friday), settles the matter,” it said in a statement.

EE said the Grade 11 pupil, Palesa Faith Manyokole, initiated legal proceedings against the Moshesh Senior Secondary School’s principal, its governing body, the provincial and national education departments, and Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.

“Learners from the school first wrote to Equal Education in 2012 to ask for the organisation’s assistance,” it said.

EE visited the school and found that the principal had spent nine months out of school, an insufficient number of teachers, that some teachers did not come to school, a lack of textbooks, and “appalling conditions” at the hostel.

Eastern Cape education spokesman Loyiso Pulumani said the department was satisfied and relieved that “common ground” was found.

“A dedicated team was placed to focus on making these rather urgent improvements. We have a very able head of that district, and we are confident that indeed the issues will be dealt with.”

EE said that in June the department said it had probed financial mismanagement at the school. It said the principal was suspended, and an acting one was appointed to improve the school.

The department said the school was underperforming and it would try to address the issue. Two months later the agreement was reached.

One of the provisions was that a month after the order was signed the department had to submit a report on progress made at the school.

Sapa

Mbombela – A man convicted of killing two brothers was sentenced to in effect 50 years in prison by the Nelspruit Circuit of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Friday.

A Sapa correspondent reported that Jabulani Elvis Maseko from KaNyamazane near Mbombela, was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Jabulani and Mangaliso Mathabatha, from Zwelisha outside White River, on 7 August last year.

He was also sentenced to 15 years for robbery with aggravating circumstances, two years for possession of ammunition and five years for possession of an unlicensed firearm.

The two life sentences would run consecutively. The other three counts would run concurrently.

Maseko was originally charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition. The murder charges and a robbery charge were added in December.

He pleaded not guilty but admitted to owning the firearm used in the crime.

No remorse

In imposing the sentence on Friday, Judge Daisy Molefe said Maseko deserved a harsh sentence.

“There are no compelling circumstances for a lesser sentence, as you [Maseko] did not show any remorse,” she said.

“You should have shown something for the court to decide on a lesser sentence. From the onset, you showed no remorse. It only came from your defence.”

She said Maseko had walked the streets with an unlicensed firearm and had used it to rob people and to kill two people in cold blood in the safety of their own home.

“The brutality of murder is too regular in the country. It should come to an end.”

Molefe described the murders as shocking to the community and the Mathabatha family.

“As the father, Dumisa Mathabatha, has testified, the death has left the family in great shock,” she said.

“He said the family still feels unsafe even now, as Maseko has failed to disclose the full names of his friends who were with him during the commission of the crime.”

Molefe said three police officers testified that Maseko’s two accomplices in a gun possession case had told them the three firearms used in the crime were being kept at Maseko’s house.

One firearm recovered

On Thursday, Molefe said when the policemen went with Maseko to his home, he led them to a sangoma’s hut where they found only one firearm hidden inside a black plastic packet under a bowl.

“The police officers also found the firearm’s magazine with two bullets inside it. A third bullet was still in the firearm’s chamber and the serial number of the firearm had been rubbed off,” she said.

Molefe did not believe that Maseko was assaulted or influenced by the policemen to reveal the whereabouts of the weapon.

“According to evidence, the weapon was pointed [out] to the officers by yourself [Maseko] voluntarily,” she said.

“They said you admitted having only one firearm, not three as your accomplices had mentioned.”

The judge said ballistic tests confirmed that the gun was the one used to kill the Mathabatha brothers.

“Exhibits from the ballistic report revealed that the two deceased were shot with the same weapon,” said the judge.

“The tests revealed that the cartridges found at the crime scene were found to have been fired from the same 9mm Z88 pistol found in your [Maseko’s] possession.”

– SAPA

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has said that the judicial system and politics must be separated, the SABC reported on Friday.

For the judiciary to function independently and competently, it should be resourced to stand independently with no parliamentary representation, he reportedly said.

Mogoeng was addressing the North West University summer graduation ceremony in Mahikeng.

The university gave him a honorary doctorate of law for his contribution to the transformation of South Africa and the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) judicial systems, according to the national broadcaster.

– SAPA

Cape Town – National police commissioner Riah Phiyega was told in Parliament on Friday to fire all her senior management staff if they failed to improve their performance.

The comment came from an exasperated Annelise van Wyk, chairperson of the police portfolio committee, as she interrogated a senior police delegation about glaring discrepancies in the SA Police Service’s 2012/13 annual report.

“It is time for this management to start earning their salaries and to start doing the jobs they are appointed for and, national commissioner, if it is not happening, fire them,” she said.

At issue was a claim in the annual report that the embattled crime intelligence division has a vacancy rate of 16.8%.

Repeated questions to SAPS general manager for corporate services Ottilia Moutlane finally revealed that in fact the embattled division was fully staffed with all 9 928 funded posts filled.

The vacancy rate related to the 1 601 positions that the police believed the branch was short of its “ideal” staff component of 10 777 members, Moutlane explained.

Van Wyk berated management for creating the impression that crime intelligence was understaffed and that this might be the cause for some of the division’s well publicised woes.

“It is creating confusion. The figure you are referring to is a wish list. You have got a 100% staff rate,” she said before ordering that the entry be fixed in an erratum to the annual report.

‘Fabrication’

DA police spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard went further and said this amounted to lying to oversight bodies.

“It is a fabrication that has gone to the auditor general, it is a very serious matter.”

Phiyega protested that the police had been entirely transparent with the auditor general, adding that it was “nowhere in our intentions” to misrepresent statistics.

Kohler-Barnard refused to withdraw her remark.

Management came in for a further rebuke when it transpired that it was battling to reduce a backlog in vetting staff, to the extent that at the moment the security clearance of five of crime intelligence’s nine provincial commanders had lapsed.

Moutlane conceded that the backlog stood at more than 7 000 officers, but since April the police had managed to vet only 127.

“It is bad,” she added.

Adopting fast-tracking vetting methods

Phiyega said she had held discussions with the SA Revenue Service (SARS) with a view to adopting fast-tracking vetting methods they had successfully implemented.

To this, Van Wyk said the national commissioner should not be micro-managing problems but be able to trust her senior managers to tackle them as a normal part of their duties.

MPs also expressed concern that the requests from other police departments to crime intelligence for assistance had decreased, suggesting that the rank and file was losing trust in the division.

The exchange came at the end of three days of briefings by the police to the committee amid speculation of a possible return by suspended crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli to his old post.

New national director of public prosecutions Mxolisi Nxasana said this week he had appealed against a court decision ordering the SAPS to reinstate criminal charges of corruption, murder and kidnapping, and disciplinary steps, against Mdluli.

The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria last month ordered the immediate reinstatement of the charges – which relate in part to the killing of a love rival of Mdluli and allegations that he looted the crime intelligence slush fund.

The murder charges had controversially been withdrawn in late 2011 but Judge John Murphy said the evidence presented a compelling prima facie case against Mdluli.

Phiyega this week said the police were anxious for the Mdluli matter to be finalised in the interest of “making this country safe and secure”.

– SAPA