The issue surrounding missing video footage taken on the scene where musician Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye and co-accused Themba Tshabalala were allegedly drag racing has reared its head again.
On Monday, State prosecutor Raymond Mathenjwa argued before magistrate Brian Nemavhidi at the Protea Magistrate’s Court that Maarohanye’s defence lawyer, Ike Motloung, had been granted close to a year to get an expert witness on cellphones to testify whether the video evidence already played before court had been tampered with or not.
Mathenjwa told the court he was giving Motloung notice to have the expert ready by Tuesday or he would make an application to have their case closed.
“Given the time afforded to accused one, if he had intentions to prove something, this should have been done. The families need closure, they’ve been in this court since the trial began,” he argued.
Motloung hit back, saying: “This is a clumsy attempt to block incriminating evidence from surfacing. If there’s anyone who has spent time on this matter, it’s Mr Mathenjwa himself. He has occupied 80 percent of the court’s time with his witnesses.”
He said that when he had wanted the video, which was in slow motion, to be played in court, it went missing.
“I have recently obtained information that the prosecutor who came to play the video, Yusuf Baba, who had played no role in the case up until the day the video was to be played, was subsequently arrested and faces charges of corruption in an unrelated matter in which evidence was cooked. It’s common cause that this video was different; it was in slow motion and doesn’t have sound. We all know that the one that didn’t go missing, which the court has seen, is (at the correct) speed and has sound,” he stated.
Nemavhidi ruled that it was in the interest of justice to allow the expert’s testimony to continue at midday on May 30.
Earlier on Monday morning, Tshabalala claimed to have been driving at 60km/h on the street in which he and Maarohanye are accused to have collided with a group of schoolchildren on March 8, 2010.
Mathenjwa asked Tshabalala: “Sir, your vehicle flew, hit the kids and fatally wounded them… Would you still maintain that’s the kind of force of a car moving at 60km/h?”
“Yes, because that was the speed I was travelling at,” he answered.
The Star