By Sheldon Morais.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has moved to “clear up misconceptions” regarding the transferal of a much-talked-about second docket in the Senzo Meyiwa murder case.
On Monday, the NPA announced that the Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), based in Pretoria, would take a decision on the second docket, as soon as the high court had ruled on the trial currently under way.
The existence of the second docket was raised in court when advocate Malesela Teffo, who acted for four of the five men accused of Meyiwa’s murder, told the judge that the second docket listed a different set of suspects. Teffo also told the court the docket was compiled by different investigators.
In a statement on Wednesday, the NPA said its announcement on Monday was wrongly interpreted as an “about-turn”.
It explained that a DPP operated within a defined geographical jurisdiction. The authority said a director could only attend to a matter which “emanates from outside his/her area of jurisdiction” if the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) directed the DPP to do so.
In the case of the murder of the former Bafana Bafana captain, the NDPP transferred the first docket – Vosloorus CAS 636/10/2014 – to the Pretoria-based Gauteng DPP in February 2020.
The murder took place in Vosloorus, in eastern Gauteng, and fell within the Johannesburg DPP’s jurisdiction.
In keeping with the 2020 decision to transfer the first docket, the second docket was also transferred to Pretoria this month for a decision.
The NPA said the second docket – Vosloorus Cas 375/1/2019 – was opened by “two police officers who were part of the initial investigating team” in January 2019 as they were “apparently frustrated by the lack of progress in the investigation”.
The authority said the officers “probably thought that the six witnesses who were in the house when the incident happened were not truthful when they mentioned that the attackers intruded in the house”.
“They apparently thought that the witnesses were concealing the truth about the true identity of the killer of Mr Senzo Meyiwa as such killer(s) could not be identified or found. A wrong suspect was also pointed out during an identification parade,” the statement read.
The five men currently on trial for the murder were arrested in May 2020. They all maintain they are innocent and the real killers are free.
“The NPA adopted a prosecutorial strategy that a decision be made after all evidence is led during trial and findings thereon, which will inform an assessment of what will transpire,” it concluded.