Jaco Wessels Kemp (36), Louise Coetzee (29), and Gert Frederik van der Westhuizen (38) have been sentenced to life imprisonment each for the premeditated murder of farm dweller Dumisani Phakathi.
The sentence was handed down at the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria.
The court further declared all three accused unfit to possess firearms and ordered them to surrender all firearms, ammunition, licences, authorisations and permits to the investigating officer.
According to evidence presented in court, the incident took place on 16 September 2023 at a chicken farm in Mamokgalieskraal, where the three accused had been attending a braai. At approximately 16:00, they saw Phakathi walking past the farm gate on his way to collect water from a nearby furrow commonly used by community members.
They approached him and assaulted him before dragging him into a storage facility on the farm, where the attack continued until he succumbed to his injuries.
In the early hours of 17 September 2023, Kemp and Coetzee were stopped by police at around 02:00 during a stop-and-search operation on the R511 towards Brits while driving a bakkie loaded with black refuse bags.
“During the search, police noticed human legs protruding from underneath the bags,” authorities said. “Upon further inspection, they discovered the bloodied body of the deceased, with his head covered in plastic.”
The pair were immediately arrested at the scene, while Van der Westhuizen handed himself over to police on 19 September after investigations linked him to the offence.
“In court, all three accused pleaded not guilty to the charges and shifted blame onto one another. However, the State Prosecutor, Advocate Lawrence More, presented compelling evidence through State witnesses, proving the State’s case beyond a reasonable doubt,” authorities said.
“In mitigation of sentence, the accused requested the court to deviate from imposing the prescribed minimum sentence because of the time they had already spent in custody since their arrest and that they have children to take care of,” authorities revealed.
However, Advocate More argued for life imprisonment, saying the trio killed the deceased without reason.
“The deceased was killed in an inhumane and cruel manner, his body placed in rubbish bags in an attempt to dispose of it at a dumping site,” he told the court.
The court also heard victim impact statements facilitated by Court Preparation Officer Lebogang Lebese, including one from the victim’s sister who expressed deep trauma following the incident.
In handing down sentence, the judge agreed with the State that there were no substantial and compelling circumstances to justify a lesser sentence, affirming that the brutality of the crime warranted life imprisonment.
Saturday Star