By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Senzo Meyiwa murder trial has been adjourned until Thursday after the defence could not continue with the cross-examination of state witness, Constable Sizwe Zungu in the high court in Pretoria.
The trial resumed in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday after it had been postponed due to one of the accused, Fisokuhle Ntuli, falling ill.
Zungu earlier testified that he was in the company of all five of the accused, during a get-together hosted by his nephew on that fateful day.
Lawyer for accused 1 and 2 – advocate Sipho Ramosepele – has re-opened his cross-examination in the high court in Pretoria. This follows an earlier ruling by Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng that no other statement exists of state witness Constable Sizwe Zungu except the one currently before the court. The defence lawyers had said that there was a handwritten and a typed statement.
Five men are on trial for the murder of the Bafana Bafana soccer star who was shot and killed in Vosloorus east of Johannesburg in 2014. Ramosepele has questioned Zungu regarding his service pistol while he was at a party and consuming alcohol at the Bashotho hostel in Vosloorus.
The adjournment came after the legal representative for accused number three asked to be supplied with all the pictures from his client’s phone.
Advocate Charles Mnisi also requested the state to provide him with a master copy from where the pictures were downloaded.
Mnisi represents Mthobisi Mncube, who has been linked to the gun that killed Meyiwa in October 2014.
“I am hamstrung to proceed with my cross-examination without further information relating to the photos. It would be recalled, my lord, we had testimony from Cellphone analyst Moses Mabasa, pathologist Dr Johannes Steenkamp, and Sergeant Petrus Nkosi, who said that they confiscated the accused three’s phones from which they downloaded a whole lot of photos and they downloaded them into a disc.
On the instruction of Col Bongani Gininda, certain photos were compiled for court purposes. In other words, Gininda would say he wants pictures where the accused three appear with his dreadlocks and this colour of attire.”
But state prosecutor Advocate George Baloyi argued that the trial should proceed on a different matter until the pictures could be made available to the defence.
Mnisi refused Baloyi’s proposition.
“It’s a sequence, my lord. The way in which we structure our cross-examination, we just don’t do it haphazardly. It’s a sequential thing. We move from one, two, three and four and up to number seven. What this witness has said is not the trajectory we want to take.”
Judge Ratha Mokgatlheng postponed the trial, which will resume on Thursday.
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