Cape Town – Unless you are in the movies, dancing in the streets is not the wisest thing to do – especially if you are involved in the criminal underworld. In fact, dancing and clowning around in the street, for everyone to see, landed alleged armed housebreaker Wanda Kebe in the dock of a criminal court of law, on Thursday, before magistrate Constance Nziweni.
He is charged with robbery, housebreaking with intent to steal, and theft.
By sheer bad luck – for Kebe – a security official who happened to know him as a common housebreaker, recognised Kebe as he tried to escape across a busy N2 highway, in broad daylight, in the Cape Town International Airport’s industrial area.
Prosecutor Daniel Cloete alleges that, minutes before running across the highway, Kebe had held up one of the shops in the vicinity, and grabbed a cellphone belonging to one of the staff. Security official Adrian Small told the court he had been assigned to assist with airport security in July last year, and was shown photographs of some of the housebreaking suspects, including one of Kebe.
Apart from the photograph of Kebe, he had often seen him dancing and clowning about in traffic on the highway, and he in fact knew Kebe by his first name. On this particular day, he had recognised Kebe as Kebe ran across the highway “right under my nose”.
To make sure it was in fact Kebe, Small shouted his name, Wanda, which made Kebe look at Small as he ran across the street, he said. In this manner, Small was able to see Kebe’s facial features from close-up.
“I wanted the accused to know that I had seen him, and that I knew who he is,” Small said. Asked by the defence if he was not perhaps mistaken about Kebe’s identity, Small said: “No – I’ve seen him too many times dancing in the streets.”
“What I saw, I saw – I do, in my own heart, believe it was him running across the highway, and if I am wrong, may God forgive me.”
Small said he had a number of photographs of Kebe on his mobile phone, and that he had shown them to the victim of the shop robbery.
“She had looked at one of them, then said yes, that’s him,” he said. Kebe denied any involvement in the shop incident, and claimed he had been at home, asleep, when it happened. The case continues on April 26.