Cape Town - The trial of three men accused of killing advocate Pete Mihalik continued in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday where Nkosinathi Khumalo was cross-examined by State advocate Greg Wolmarans.
The trial started in May 2022 and is at the tail-end as the defence now answers to the allegations by the State.
On Thursday, advocate Wolmarans put it to Khumalo that his version of events could best be described as “hopeless nonsense”.
Khumalo, Sizwe Biyela and Vuyile Maliti are charged with five counts including murder, attempted murder, possession of an unlicensed firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition, for their alleged involvement in Mihalik’s killing.
Khumalo said he travelled to Cape Town with Biyela in the hopes of trading gold coins. He said the first time he saw Maliti was when they met at the bus terminal when he arrived on October 28, 2018.
From his testimony, it seems there was no time to waste as Maliti guided them to another meeting point in “town” over the course of two days to do “business” inside a Polo. He couldn’t remember the street names and said he was unfamiliar with Cape Town, referring to Khayelitsha as a “village”.
He said he had never been to Maliti’s
place or his home but drove with police as they tried to find where the “taxi boss” stayed.
During cross-examination by the State, he agreed that he, Biyela, Maliti and another man he didn’t know, whose name he couldn’t remember although he described him as a lightskinned Xhosa man, met on October 29 and 30 for a business exchange.
Wolmarans asked Khumalo what he thought of “four grown men sitting in a standard Polo parked on an ordinary road to conduct a deal in excess of R300 000?” Khumalo first corrected advocate Wolmarans’s figure to ”R310 000“ then said: ”I was following in the procedure in which they handle their business.”
When asked how long they haggled on the price for the gold coins, he said they stayed in the vehicle for an average of 12 minutes.
He disagreed with certain aspects of evidence provided by traffic officer Boy Makutu and former AGU detective
Isaac Tshabalala. He said both these State witnesses were “lying” when they testified in court.
Wolmarans put it to him that both the witnesses were telling the truth but that Makutu was perhaps mistaken.
Khumalo, who earlier said the traffic officer was “acting up”, apologised for Makutu’s mistakes but was adamant “Tshabalala was lying”.
Khumalo asked if he wanted the court to believe he was not here to commit murder but to sell gold coins, said, “yes”.