Witness tells court how she lost her trust in the SAPS
A WOMAN told the Durban Regional Court this week that she had lost all trust in the police since the day two officers barged into their home, ordered her relative to lie down and shot him three times.
The woman, who cannot be named as she is in a protection program, was a State witness and testified in court this week in the matter involving Sergeant Thanduxolo Phelago and Constable Mayendran Chetty.
It was alleged that Phelago and Chetty had killed Pilayelo Sydney Buthelezi in August 2022.
The policemen were on trial and charged with four murders including that of an ANC eThekwini ward 99 councillor Mnqobi Molefe, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of housebreaking with intent to commit murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition.
While leading her evidence in chief, the witness said that she had woken up early in the morning of August 23, 2022 to use the toilet, when she heard voices of people, saying ‘open up it is the police’.
She said she had peeped through the window and saw two people, one wearing a police reflector jacket and the other wearing dark-coloured clothes.
State prosecutor advocate Nhlanhla Shange asked her what language was spoken by the people who knocked on the door and she said, “One spoke in IsiZulu and the other in English”.
She said upon hearing them, she went to her sister’s room to get her up.
“I woke her up and said there were police outside. I told her to wake up and listen. We heard them giving him instructions. They told him to lie down, and shortly after that, a firearm went off three times. We then heard footsteps exiting and shortly thereafter we heard the engine of a motor vehicle running,” she said.
The witness who was pregnant at the time, said she was shocked.
She said she phoned Sergeant Khawula, a policewoman who they would usually call when they faced a problem.
She said after a while the police arrived and their home was full of people. She said she could not get to the room in which Buthelezi lay, but she saw from the outside that he was no more.
She told the court that when she made a statement to the police, she withheld the information of the reflector jacket because she did not trust the police.
She said she did not even trust Khawula with the information.
She said after two weeks when they had buried Buthelezi, her sister told her that she recognised Phelago’s voice because Buthelezi used to fix his car. However, she said she told her to not say anything about this.
Shange asked her why she did not tell the police everything and she said: “I was waiting for the time when I will come to the court because I know that I am safe here. If I had spoken up on that day I would not be alive today.”
During the cross-examination, counsel representing the accused advocate GJ Leppan asked the witness if she did not want justice for Buthelezi.
“Didn’t you want the killers to be arrested? If you trusted Khawula why didn’t you tell her?” he asked.
The witness she did not trust Khawula with this kind of information and that her trust in SAPS members had been broken. The trial will continue in December.
