Pretoria - Ever since the trial of the five men accused of killing Senzo Meyiwa started in April at the North Gauteng High Court, startling statements and shocking allegations have been made, leaving many wondering about who are the real killers of the former football star.
Meyiwa was killed in 2014 while visiting his girlfriend and the mother of his child, singer Kelly Khumalo, in Vosloorus.
It was a deadly robbery gone wrong, South Africa was told.
Khumalo and the rest of the people were in the house when Meyiwa was shot.
The perpetrators, two of them, came into the house and shot Meyiwa during a botched robbery. They fled.
But as the State tries to prove its case and secure a guilty murder conviction against the five accused standing trial in the Pretoria High Court, there have been some eye popping moments in the televised trial.
Shoddy work from police at the crime scene exposed
The State’s first witness, Sergeant Thabo Mosia, has been testifying in court for three weeks. He was the first forensic police officer on the scene.
At some point during cross-examination by the defence of accused number five, defence advocate Zandile Mshololo, Mosia conceded that there might have been a possibility for the crime scene where Meyiwa was shot, to have been contaminated as he found people inside the house. He also told the court he allowed people to sleep in the house despite not finishing his work on the crime scene.
Mshololo also pointed out that Mosia and his team failed to take any DNA evidence or fingerprints from the main kitchen door handle upon arrival at the scene despite assertions that the perpetrators had used the door to gain entry into the home.
She further alleged that Mosia had failed in his duty as one of the first responders to the scene as he did not investigate the kitchen counter next to the door where the bullet was shown to have been found.
Mosia also failed to do a gun residue test to determine if any of the people in the house may have shot Meyiwa.
In his explanation, he said that he did not do so because he relied on Brigadier Philani Ndlovu, Gauteng’s then-head of detectives, for direction.
Ndlovu has since died.
Crime scene cleaned before police arrived
Mshololo said there was a witness statement by Gugu Ngubeni that referred to a person named Maggie Phiri who was seen cleaning the house after the shooting.
According to the statement, Phiri had been seen collecting beer bottles from the floor. She stated that she did not want people to know that the seven had been drinking at the Khumalo house.
As a result, there were no blood stains on the kitchen floor. This is despite having led testimony that Meyiwa was shot in the kitchen and it was alleged that he had bled a lot.
He said he only took blood swabs from the kitchen wall and more blood was from the floor of the sitting room.
Maggie Phiri is one of the seven people listed in the second docket as a possible suspect.
Meyiwa was already dead when he was rushed to hospital
Advocate Malesela Teffo who represents four of the accused told the court that a witness will come and testify that Meyiwa died at the Khumalo household. He was rushed to hospital so his body could be left at the mortuary, he alleged.
Second docket makes witnesses suspects
Teffo told the court that there was a second docket in the Meyiwa trial. On Wednesday, Mshololo and the State received a copy of the second docket for the first time.
The docket implicates Maggie Phiri (who allegedly cleaned the crime scene) Kelly Khumalo (Meyiwa’s girlfriend), Longwe Twala (Zandile Khumalo’s boyfriend), Gladness Khumalo (Kelly’s mother), Zandile Khumalo (Kelly’s sister) and two of Senzo Meyiwa’s friends, Tumelo Madlala and Mthokozisi Twala.
The charges in the second docket are for murder and defeating the ends of justice.
The details of the second docket have yet to be fully ventilated in court.
Teffo told the court that while both cases related to Meyiwa’s murder, they had different investigating teams which made different findings in respect to what had transpired and who was responsible.
Kelly Khumalo shot Senzo Meyiwa by mistake
Teffo told the court that an unidentified witness would testify that the singer shot Meyiwa by mistake while he was visiting her.
He said the same eyewitness will further testify that the firearm used to shoot Meyiwa came with Longwe Twala and the firearm is a revolver.
The trial was postponed to Monday to allow Mshololo to study the new docket after she only received it on Wednesday.
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