Kimberley – Final arguments in the triple murder Griekwastad farm murder case started in the Northern Cape High Court on Tuesday.

A 17-year-old youth is accused of shooting dead farmer Deon Steenkamp, 44, his wife Christel, 43, and their daughter Marthella, 14, on 6 April 2012.

He faces an additional charge of raping Marthella and of lying to the police.

Riaan Bode, for the youth, started proceedings with his final arguments in the defence’s case.

He told Northern Cape Judge President Frans Kgomo that in relation to the rape charge, witnesses were not fully convinced that a rape took place.

Quoting from the court record, Bode submitted there was an indication that the red mark on the girl’s genitals could also be self-inflicted or due to other reasons.

The boy has denied the charges, and has told the court someone else must have been in the Steenkamp house on the day of the murders.

However, the State has claimed his evidence was in the realm of the impossible.

The boy has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The case continues.
SAPA

Johannesburg – As the Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial entered its third week, media coverage and public interaction about the court proceedings had dwindled, a data report revealed on Monday.
According to media monitoring company Data Driven Insight (DDI), President Jacob Zuma and his Nkandla homestead had dominated the headlines in the last 24 hours, ending at 16:00 on Monday, with the Paralympic athlete’s trial taking the third place.

In the first week of the trial, Pistorius’s trial dominated 43.12% of the media coverage, 35.99% in the second week but was down to 20.89% in the third week.

Pistorius is on trial for the murder of his law graduate and model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

He shot her dead through a locked bathroom door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year. He alleged to have mistaken her for an intruder.

DDI’s report stated that witnesses Michelle Burger and Darren Fresco’s testimony generated the most conversation online and in the news.

Burger, who was the first witness to testify in the trial, had dominated coverage with 12.95%.

She lived in the complex next to Pistorius’s and testified about how she was woken up by screams followed by the gunshots coming from Pistorius’s home.

Fresco, who was a friend of Pistorius, had taken 10.21% coverage of the trial.

He testified about how he had taken the blame for Pistorius after the athlete fired a gun under a table in a packed Melrose Arch restaurant in January last year, grazing the foot of another friend of theirs. Pistorius claimed it was an accident.

Fresco also testified about how Pistorius had fired a gun through an open sunroof of a car as they travelled with Pistorius’s ex-girlfriend, Samantha Taylor.

This was shortly after the trio had been stopped by a police officer for speeding. Upon searching the car, the officer reprimanded Pistorius for leaving his loaded gun on the car seat.

While scores of South African media houses have been closely following the trial, DDI claimed that the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Australia were covering the story more than local media.

The data was compiled from 6.2 million social media platforms which included blogs, forums, social networks and commentary.

It also included data from 60 000 global online newspapers, 2 000 South African print publications and 66 radio and television stations.

SAPA

Johannesburg – A R40m jackpot is up for grabs for lotto players, the National Lottery said on Monday.
One lucky player could win the multi-million jackpot on Saturday, said Duduzile Ndendwa, spokesperson for Gidani, the company that operates the lotto.

She said since the beginning of March R30m jackpots had already been won.

A KwaZulu-Natal winner walked away with R12.1m on 5 March and on 19 March a player from Gauteng won R21m.

The lotto had turned 14 on 1 March, and to celebrate its birthday, some R70m was offered in jackpots this month.

SAPA