CCTV footage was a ‘silent witness’

Western Cape High Court Judge Patricia de Lille accepted CCTV footage as the “silent witness” in the murder of 23-year-old sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo.

Internationally acclaimed artist, Zwelethu Mthethwa, was on Thursday found guilty of the April 14, 2013, killing in the early hours of the morning in Ravenscraig Road, Woodstock.

He will immediately swap his suit for prison overalls as desperate attempts by his defence lawyer, William Booth, to convince the court to extend his R100 000 bail until sentencing, failed.

Since his arrest in May 2013, Mthethwa has claimed he could not recall what happened. All he could remember was that he was at The Corner Lounge in Gugulethu on the afternoon of April 13 where he paid for R2 016 worth of alcohol.

He denied any involvement in the murder.

CCTV footage captured the assault, however, and the State contended that Mthethwa was both the driver of the Porsche seen pulling over in Ravenscraig Road and the kicker attacking Kumalo.

Goliath accepted the CCTV footage as “unimpeachable” and found that such visuals had become “crucial in collecting evidence and finding the truth in criminal cases”.

While she said the case had been based largely on circumstantial evidence, she had weighed up all the factors “holistically”.

The CCTV footage of the attack on Kumalo showed a man repeatedly kicking, with booted feet, and beating the “petite woman, who weighed nearly 46 kilogrammes”.

There were 23 seconds where the man and an unidentified woman could not be seen. Goliath said the woman added a few kicks to Kumalo’s head while the man delivered “powerful stomping action” and “repetitive blows” to Kumalo’s body which appeared motionless.

During the trial, the forensic pathologist who performed the post mortem on Kumalo’s body, Dr Linda Liebenberg, testified that Kumalo died from blunt force trauma and a severely lacerated liver which would have caused massive internal bleeding.

The liver had been “virtually torn in half”.

The defence had attacked the authenticity of the footage, but the court found that it failed to show that the footage had been manipulated or tampered with and “conclusively accepted it as evidence”.

Goliath also found that the defence’s hypothesis that the kicker had been running from danger when he came onto screen was “far fetched”.

She said there was a “marked resemblance in the height of the kicker and driver”.

Goliath also rejected the evidence of defence witness, Dr Toviah Zabow, who was called at the eleventh hour to testify about Mthethwa’s memory lapse.

“Dr Zabow conceded that his psychiatric opinion was based on what he had been told by the accused.”

She said he had not been able to justify any psychiatric basis for Mthethwa’s lack of recall and further, the fact that Mthethwa elected not to testify, rendered Zabow’s evidence of “no value”.

“There is direct evidence of the accused’s car being at the scene, and the similarities between the assailant and accused are remarkable. The only reasonable inference to be drawn is that the driver was the assailant.”

Tracker evidence had shown that the car parked in Ravenscraig Road during the six-minute attack was Mthethwa’s.

Goliath rejected the defence’s version that the driver and kicker were two different people and found Mthethwa guilty of murder with intent in the form of “dolus eventualis”, as he foresaw that the consequences of his actions could result in Kumalo’s death.

Mthethwa could be seen conferring with his lawyer after court adjourned, before journalists were ordered out of the court room and police officials entered to take the convicted murderer to prison where he will spend his first night behind bars.

Sentencing proceedings have been set down for March 29.

African News Agency