By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The prosecutor in the case against six men accused of killing Gauteng health department whistleblower Babita Deokaran has indicated former health minister Zweli Mkhize is either a potential witness or suspect.
The bail application of the six men arrested for the crime got into its second day in the Johannesburg Regional Court on Friday, when the defence revealed it had been in contact with Mkhize’s legal team.
This after it emerged earlier in the week that one of the alleged killers had fingered Mkhize as the mastermind behind Deokaran’s death, in a since-disputed confession he now claims he was tortured and forced to make.
“They want to communicate with us and we would obviously – if at all possible – like to obtain a statement from Dr Mkhize,” the accused’s advocate, Peter Wilkins, told the court – adding it could have a “huge impact” on the case and put to bed, once and for all, the issue of the veracity of the confession.
He asked, however, for an indication from the state as to whether Mkhize was indeed a suspect – explaining that if he was that the defence was barred from engaging with him.
State advocate Steven Rubin refused to confirm this one way or the other, but indicated there existed at least the potential that he was a state witness or suspect and that the defence could, as a result, not have any communication with him.
The investigating officer, meanwhile, has expressed concern that if the alleged killers are released on bail, they too could end up dead.
During Friday’s proceedings, Rubin read into the record an affidavit opposing bail from the Johannesburg Central Serious Organised Crime Unit’s Captain Masenxani Percy Chauke.
While he did not identify any outstanding suspects by name – saying he was not in a position to do so while the investigations into their potential involvement were still ongoing – Chauke did in the affidavit highlight the investigation was at “a very sensitive stage”.
And there is already a significant amount of evidence that shows that the murder was politically motivated,” he said.
He further said the “kingpins, paymasters, and integral roleplayers” were still at large – adding that:
“Should the applicants be released on bail, there is a real probability that the persons behind the instruction to murder the deceased will execute a similar order on the applicants in order to avoid their being brought to justice.”
Deokaran was gunned down outside her home in Mondeor, south Johannesburg, in August, in what appears to have been a hit.
Meanwhile Mkhize in a statement on Wednesday said he was shocked that his “name had been dragged into the case of the men arrested in connection with the murder”
He said he wanted to assure Deokaran’s family that he had nothing to do with the callous crime,”nor the alleged procurement irregularities which are believed to have driven it”.
“It should be remembered that these alleged procurement irregularities took place at a provincial level, far away from the national sphere of government where I was deployed as a national minister of health.”
He said he had instructed his lawyers to write to the Independent Police Independent Directorate (Ipid) “to investigate the circumstances surrounding the extraction and acceptance into evidence of the reported ‘confession’ whose value could only have been to cause him political embarrassment”.