Johannesburg – The correctional services department has promised to give convicted killer Clive Derby-Lewis’s application for medical parole urgent attention.

Derby-Lewis’s lawyer Elsabe Juin said on Monday she was told by department officials the application would be marked urgent and be treated as a priority.

“After the department said they lost the papers we initially filed for the application, I personally delivered copies to the head of the prison on Thursday. I was told my papers will be submitted urgently,” Juin said.

She said the department seemed co-operative after her firm said they would approach a high court to force the department to comply with the law when handling the 78-year-old’s application.

“They did not want to commit to a date but I was told it would be a priority. The papers [for a high court application] are ready should we feel we need to proceed, but we expect feedback from the department by mid-July.”

Comment from department spokesperson Manelisi Wolela was not immediately available early on Monday afternoon.

On 19 June, correctional services said it received an incomplete application for medical parole for Derby-Lewis and was waiting for a complete form.

Wolela further dismissed as “disingenuous”, claims by Derby-Lewis’s lawyers that they had not received feedback from the department after submitting an application for medical parole on 2 May.

Derby-Lewis was convicted of conspiracy to kill SA Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani by providing the gun Polish immigrant Janusz Walus used to kill him in the driveway of his Boksburg, East Rand, home on 10 April 1993.

The 78-year-old former Conservative Party MP, who was sentenced to 25 years behind bars, has already served more than 20 years of his sentence.

Derby-Lewis was initially sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished in 1995.

He testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that his fight against communism motivated the murder. The commission denied him amnesty in 1999, a decision upheld by the Western Cape High Court a year later.

He first applied for parole in June 2010.

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Johannesburg – The correctional services department has promised to give convicted killer Clive Derby-Lewis’s application for medical parole urgent attention.

Derby-Lewis’s lawyer Elsabe Juin said on Monday she was told by department officials the application would be marked urgent and be treated as a priority.

“After the department said they lost the papers we initially filed for the application, I personally delivered copies to the head of the prison on Thursday. I was told my papers will be submitted urgently,” Juin said.

She said the department seemed co-operative after her firm said they would approach a high court to force the department to comply with the law when handling the 78-year-old’s application.

“They did not want to commit to a date but I was told it would be a priority. The papers [for a high court application] are ready should we feel we need to proceed, but we expect feedback from the department by mid-July.”

Comment from department spokesperson Manelisi Wolela was not immediately available early on Monday afternoon.

On 19 June, correctional services said it received an incomplete application for medical parole for Derby-Lewis and was waiting for a complete form.

Wolela further dismissed as “disingenuous”, claims by Derby-Lewis’s lawyers that they had not received feedback from the department after submitting an application for medical parole on 2 May.

Derby-Lewis was convicted of conspiracy to kill SA Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani by providing the gun Polish immigrant Janusz Walus used to kill him in the driveway of his Boksburg, East Rand, home on 10 April 1993.

The 78-year-old former Conservative Party MP, who was sentenced to 25 years behind bars, has already served more than 20 years of his sentence.

Derby-Lewis was initially sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished in 1995.

He testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that his fight against communism motivated the murder. The commission denied him amnesty in 1999, a decision upheld by the Western Cape High Court a year later.

He first applied for parole in June 2010.

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Johannesburg – Ten initiates have died in the Eastern Cape since the beginning of the winter initiation season, the provincial health department said on Monday.

“The latest death occurred in the early hours of this morning in Ncise village in Mthatha,” spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said.

Another boy died over the weekend near Cathcart, with four other deaths previously recorded in the Mthatha area, one in the Tsolo area, and the remaining three occurring in Libode, in the Ngqeleni area.

Kupelo said the department was extremely concerned, given the number of lives already lost.

“We have a total of 49 admissions in various hospitals in the Transkei and that is disrupting our day-to-day operations. Nurses and doctors have to abandon other patients and focus on the initiates,” he said.

“This is a man-made crisis which is not supposed to be happening.”

The department was setting aside R20m to hire 27 additional 4x4s for traditional leaders to monitor initiations and to hire private doctors who would be able to offer medical assistance.

Kupelo said people driven by greed were running illegal schools with no regard for the initiate’s safety or government efforts to reduce initiate deaths.

“A death in our view must be treated as murder as there are allegations that these boys are dying unnecessarily from dehydration, assault and infection,” he said.

“These perpetrators think they have a licence to kill. Normal court processes are struck off the roll because parents don’t attend proceedings.”

Special courts

Kupelo suggested a system similar to that used during the 2010 World Cup, where special courts were established to deal with crimes associated with the tournament.

Parents had to also take responsibility, after the father of an initiate refused to allow the department to take their son for treatment, after the boy was identified as being weak and needing medical attention.

“The father of the deceased refused, and a day later health services were requested to collect a corpse,” Kupelo said.

“That parent should be investigated and brought to book.”

The father at the time said his family did not need the health department to intervene in the traditional affairs of his family.

The boy was at a legitimate initiation school around Tadase village.

“From 2001, we’ve had over 500 boys dead dying in the bush. This can’t be allowed to continue,” Kupelo said.

The deaths of initiates did not suggest a ritual in crisis but rather a custom that had been hijacked by people who had no clue how to deal with it.

“They are greedy. They want to make money. They want to preside over those rituals where traditional beers are served on a particular day,” Kupelo said.

“They don’t care about life and they don’t care what they are doing… courts need to impose harsher sentences.”

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Johannesburg – Two men were sentenced to life in prison for gang rapes and robberies by the Free State High Court sitting in the Kroonstad Magistrate’s Court on Monday, police said.

The third accused, a minor, was given a suspended sentence of eight years, said police spokesperson Stephen Thakeng.

“Five women, aged between 16 and 20, were gang raped and robbed in separate incidents,” said Thakeng.

Judge Shamin Ebrahim handed down four life sentences to Rammokgo Hendrik Tsotsotso for the crimes, while Mkhize Peter Mosotho was handed three life sentences.

Thakeng said the third accomplice, now aged 17, was a minor at the time the crimes were committed, and was given an eight year suspended sentence.

The crimes were committed during December 2012 and 2013 in Rammulotsi, Viljoenskroon.

The three attacked couples and threw stones at the females’ male companions and assaulted them.

The accused then took turns raping the women, and then robbed them of their belongings, said Thakeng.

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Pretoria – An acoustic and electro-acoustic engineer testified in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial, in the North Gauteng High Court, on whether a scream was from a man or woman.

Pistorius’s lawyer Barry Rouw, called in Ivan Lin, to testify for the defence.

Witnesses have testified for the State they heard a woman scream from Pistorius’s house in the early hours of 14 February.

Pistorius’s defence has argued that when Pistorius is anxious, he screams like a woman.

In his testimony Lin said if listeners were 177m away on balcony and the sound came from the bathroom, sound would have been audible and intelligible, but if they in bedroom and sound came from bathroom, sound would not have been audible or intelligible.

According to the first witness to testify in the trial, neighbour Michelle Burger, who lived 177m away, claimed she heard a woman’s “blood-curdling screams”.

The Paralympian shot Steenkamp through the locked door of his toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to open the door and attack him.

She was struck in the hip, arm, and head. After firing the shots, Pistorius used a cricket bat to break open the door to get to a dying Steenkamp.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charge of the murder as well as not guilty to various firearm-related charges.

Earlier,  Judge Thokozile Masipa ordered that police officers explain how an extension cord went missing from murder accused Oscar Pistorius’s house.

The cord disappeared from the house where Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on 14 February last year. It appears on police photos of the crime scene. Pistorius is on trial, charged with murdering Steenkamp.

“The house was locked and there was no burglary. It cannot walk. It may not assist Mr Barry Roux, but it will certainly assist me because I am very unhappy about it,” Masipa said.

Roux had told the court the defence’s efforts to get the cable from the State had been in vain.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said after intensive searches the cable was not found. He said it would be impossible to go and search the house because it had been sold.

He said the cord was not on the inventory of items police seized from Pistorius’s house.

“Yes it was in the house as seen on the photographs. It was not in the same position on the 14th and 15th [of February 2013]. Where it is, did somebody take it? I cannot answer,” said Nel.

“I am answering on behalf of the police. I am standing here with the investigating officer.”

Masipa ordered that police officers who sealed the crime scene depose affidavits about the cord.

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