Cape Town – Constable Nomampondomise Gobodo has detailed the grim discovery of 19-year-old Sinoxolo Mafevuka’s naked body in a communal toilet with some of her clothes stuffed in a cistern and some items inside the toilet bowl at SST block in Town Two Khayelitsha.
Gobodo who is stationed at the Harare police station in Khayelitsha, was giving evidence before Western Cape High Court acting judge Taswell Papier during the trial of two men charged with rape and murder of their cousin’s girlfriend.
Mafevuka’s body was found on the morning of March 2 last year by residents who alerted the police.
The last time her family saw her was when she had gone to use the toilet situated about 250 meters from their home in SST.
Gobodo, who has been a police officer for seven years, was the first State witness to give evidence in the case.
She and a colleague were the first officers to arrive at the scene after they received a call about a body in a toilet at SST block.
Gobodo said it took them less than 15 minutes to get to the scene where they were met by a crowd of residents who stood around the toilet.
A resident at the scene had approached them, informing them of a woman’s body in one of the communal toilets.
At first she did not see Mafevuka as the toilet was closed. It was not locked, she testified.
“I saw a female on the side of the toilet. Her back was facing towards the door. Her upper body was bending towards the cistern. She was not wearing anything but there was a jersey on top of her. The jersey was placed at her waist level. Her private parts were visible,” she said.
Gobodo said she then requested the residents to move away from the area as she started cordoning it off and called for an ambulance, a detective and a forensic expert to be dispatched to the scene.
She said paramedics were first to arrive but had to wait for a photographer before they could examine the body.
In the toilet, investigators recovered a bra, panties, a hat and flipflops. Behind the toilet bowl was what Gobodo believed were sunglasses.
DNA results could not link the accused, Xolisa and Athabile Mafilika, to the crime.
The two on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to the charges against them. Athabile’s defence advocate, Shaid Bruinders, told the court that his client had an alibi.
He said Athabile had been at his aunt’s house watching Generations on the night of the incident.
He said he later went to his room where he spent the rest of the night with his girlfriend. A postmortem report had revealed that the teenager was strangled and raped.
Gobodo will resume her testimony when the trial continues Wednesday morning.