Senzo Meyiwa: Court rules that accused made confessions freely and voluntarily

The High Court in Pretoria on Thursday ruled that the confessions by accused number 1, Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya, and accused 2, Bongani Ntanzi, in the Senzo Meyiwa murder case were made freely and voluntarily.

The confessions have been admitted as evidence in the main trial.

The trial-within-a-trial, which started in October 2022, had sought to determine the admissibility of confession statements.

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Advocate Thulani Mngomezulu had argued that his clients denied making the confessions freely and voluntarily.

They had accused the police officers of assaulting the confessions out of them, with Ntanzi once singling out lead investigator Brigadier Bongani Gininda for allegedly offering him R3 million for a confession implicating “the right people”.

Gininda denied the allegations.

Senzo Meyiwa: Confessions ‘made freely’

“After careful analysis of the evidence presented by the state and the cross-examination”, the judge ruled that the confessions were made freely and voluntarily, and without any coercion.

Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng emphasised that he was making a ruling, and not a judgment, and it could be reviewed in the main trial.

He said: “A ruling on admissibility is not final. Relevant evidence in the main trial may be taken into account by the judge when reviewing his decision on admissibility no matter what the source of such relevant evidence might be. There is no reason why this should not be the position when a trial-within-a-trial is held.

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“A ruling on a trial-within-a-trial may be reviewed at the end of the trial in the light of later evidence.

“Accordingly, the only reason advanced in the judgment for admitting the confession was that the evidence given by the appellant was unsatisfactory. The evidence which he [the magistrate] relied upon in reaching this conclusion is all given after the confession was admitted and it’s related to the contents of the confession rather than the alleged coercion.

“The evidence relating to the coercion had been given during a trial-within-a-trial and was not scrutinised at all. It is difficult to see in those circumstances on what grounds the magistrate admitted the confession in the first place.

“The magistrate appeared to be under the impression that the confession may be admitted during a trial, provided that only at the end of the trial the evidence as a whole is sufficient to justify the admissibility.

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“This would, in my view, constitute gross irregularity and reduce the procedure for determining whether a confession is admissible nothing more than a charade. The admissibility of a confession or otherwise falls to be determined on the evidence placed before a court in a trial-within-a-trial together with the admissible evidence which has gone before it.

“If at the end of the trial-within-a-trial, the requisites of admissibility had not been proved, the confession may or must be excluded. It cannot be admitted on the basis that other evidence may emerge during the course of the trial to justify its admission. Once a confession is admitted, it is provisional only in the sense that evidence may thereafter emerge which requires it to be excluded.”

Senzo Meyiwa was fatally shot by armed intruders at the family home of Kelly Khumalo in Vosloorus, Gauteng, on 26 October 2014, in what has been labelled as a robbery gone wrong.