It is time to pull the curtains down on this legal theatre

Meanwhile, presiding Judge Ratha Mokgoathleng has received public accolades for his handling of the trial by preventing the melodramatic antics displayed by previous witnesses in court from happening again.

With another high-profile murder case also on national television, the Myiwa case still seems to be attracting a large percentage of viewers on TV and social media.

Both the Meyiwa and Bester murder trials, the latter held at the Bloemfontein High Court in the Free State, have become the biggest audience draw-cards for television and social media viewers in the country.

Both trials feature high-profile social celebrities who in their own right attract large media audiences and provide local followers with a bumper grandstand viewing from the comfort of their homes.

According to witness testimonies given in court, the alleged intruders quietly slipped out of the house and fled down the street towards the local park before disappearing into the night. They left behind a heavily bleeding Meyiwa, who had slumped between the sofa and the television stand, as he desperately gasped for survival.

Fast-forward to 2015, police announced the arrest of a local Rastafarian and local car-washer with dreadlocks. The suspect was identified to the media as one Zamokuhle Mbatha.

Mbatha also used to wash Senzo’s X6 when the national goalkeeper came around to see his girlfriend Kelly Khumalo in Kutlwanong Street in Mzamo Acres, Vosloorus.

As we all know by now, after just two appearances at the Boksburg Magistrates Court, Mbatha’s case was withdrawn and thrown out of court. Mbatha was driven home by three detectives, dropping him off at a street corner not far from his parent’s home in Ponong.

Then sometime around October 2022, Police Minister Bheki Cele announced the arrest of five men he described as part of a criminal syndicate whose master-mind would also soon be joining them in police custody. Cele revealed to the media that the five suspects were responsible for the murder of Meyiwa.

Paraded at the Boksburg Magstrate’s Court before their appearance in 2022, all five accused made dramatic pleas to the media proclaiming their innocence of the murder they were accused of. They, in turn, accused the police of torturing and assaulting them during which they were forced to admit to the murder of Mayiwa.

They were lambasted with a barrage of verbal insults and emotional abuse when they were accused by one of the witnesses of having destroyed the Khumalo family by murdering Mayiwa.

Kelly’s sister Zandile bravely pointed at one of the accused in the dock as the man who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Meyiwa.

It is these same allegations, corroborated by the testimony of several witnesses who have pointed at accused number two, Bongani Ntanzi as the man who pulled the trigger.

And now that Mokgoathleng has finally ruled against the audio confession of accused number two, it could open the way for the introduction of the controversial second docket (number 375).

Perhaps now is the time to pull the curtains down on this legal theatre and allow the final part of this legal murder to come to its final close.