Durban - Westville residents, who were victims of a gang of armed robbers who terrorised their neighbourhood over the Christmas season two years ago, will begin telling their stories this week as they testify in the trial of the four men accused of the crimes.
The crime wave made international headlines because international artist Clinton de Menezes, 43, who was on holiday from Kenya, was shot dead in front of his wife and child on New Year’s Eve while celebrating his first wedding anniversary.
Just 13 days before, Westville resident Graham Payne was shot in the hip when the gang broke into his Springvale Road home as he and his wife were finishing their dinner.
The men in the dock before Durban High Court Judge Esther Steyn on Monday were Siyabonga Khoza, 24, Lugani Ngidi, 21, Bongani Makathini, 28, and Fista Alimasi, 26, who is from Burundi.
They face seven charges relating to three separate housebreaking and robbery incidents, one at the Paynes’ on December 13, one at the home of Gail Hamilton on December 29 and the final one on December 31 at the home of Simon Malpas in Waterfall Avenue, Berea West, where De Menezes and his family were staying at the time.
In all three incidents, household goods were taken including television sets, cellphones and laptops.
According to a summary of facts handed in to court, the State alleges that Alimasi was the “mastermind” of the gang, although he never participated in the robberies.
It is alleged that he was the one who hired the services of a metered taxi driver, Ntokozo Langa – who is to be a witness for the State – to fetch the others from Clermont, drop them in Westville, and then fetch them later after they committed the crimes.
Langa would also testify that he had once seen the other three accused handing over a stolen television set to Alimasi at his flat in Berea Road.
After the shooting of De Menezes, the men were arrested after the taxi was pulled over by the police.
It contained goods stolen from the Malpas home and a 9mm pistol, which was used to shoot De Menezes, and which was licensed to the deceased grandfather of Ngidi.
All four accused pleaded not guilty to all the charges on Monday. Only Alimasi elaborated on his plea, saying he knew Langa but had never met his co-accused until he saw them in the holding cells after his arrest.
Langa, he said, had offered to get him a cheap television and had brought one to his flat, asking for R2 000.
He had had to borrow money from a friend to pay for it, but then had been left with nothing to pay his rent, so he had given it to a friend who had sold it on.
Prosecutor advocate Mahen Naidu said apart from the eyewitness accounts and the evidence of Langa, the State would also rely on pointings out at identification parades and ballistic reports.
De Menezes’s widow, Nicola, is not expected to return to South Africa to testify.
The trial has been set down for two weeks.
The Mercury