Catherine Rice
African News Agency
The Western Cape High Court is expected to view CCTV footage, which allegedly captures the murder of sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo, tomorrow.
The State’s case against acclaimed artist Zwelethu Mthethwa is largely based on the footage, which allegedly shows his Porsche pulling over to the side of Ravenscraig Road in Woodstock in the early hours of April 14, 2013. It also apparently shows him getting out of the car and beating and kicking Kumalo to death.
On Monday, Judge Patricia Goliath granted the defence’s application to hold a trial-within-a-trial to determine the authenticity and therefore admissibility of the video footage. But she disagreed with the defence’s view that the footage did not need to be shown to establish its authenticity, and said the court was in fact “obliged” to view it.
The owner of Eagle Technology, Nathan Bearman, earlier told the court that his company had installed CCTV cameras in two buildings opposite each other in Ravenscraig Road. He told the court that the two buildings had closed-circuit television cameras installed, and that the systems were not connected to a network.
In the one building, he said the recorder was located in a locked office, while in the other it was in a locked cupboard. Bearman detailed the systems’ four layers of security.
He said they were secured against theft, had password protection, as well as an encoded time/date stamp to say when the video was recorded.
The final layer of security was “the actual machine itself and the way it records information”. The “fact that the footage could be reviewed was because the integrity of the system was intact”.
During cross-examination, defence advocate William Booth told the court that Bearman had been reluctant to give a statement to the investigating officer.
Bearman disputed Booth’s contention that the most crucial aspect of whether there had been tampering was a watermark on the footage. A watermark is a piece of digital information that is encoded with that video clip. Bearman said a watermark could be added at a later stage.
Judge Goliath reprimanded Booth for repeatedly saying that Bearman was not an expert. She said one cannot say that as Bearman “has 14 years of experience in the industry”.
Outside court, Kumalo’s mother Eva said her daughter did not deserve to die the way she did. She described Nokuphila as a friendly and kind person who loved to dance.