Cape Town - A shocked court heard on Monday how a school principal allegedly forced an employee to bury a dog alive.
School cleaner Elliott Mfengu told the Khayelitsha Magistrates’ Court that school head Manono Makhaphela ordered him and a colleague to bury the dog in the schoolyard for defecating.
The dog survived the horror ordeal after being buried up to its neck in a deep pit.
The Luhlazo Secondary High School principal is facing two charges of neglect, torture or cruelty for burying the dog and another one for causing an animal unnecessary harm under the Animal Protection Act.
“It was in the morning of October 20, 2011, and we were called by the principal, telling us to remove a dog that had messed up a classroom,” Mfengu told the court.
“We removed it and thought we would clean up the mess and throw it [the dog] outside the school gates because it could not walk.
“We didn’t take it [the dog] very far because he [principal] said it would come back.
“He said we must dig a hole near the tennis court and put it in there.”
Mfengu, 61, says Makhaphela told him to dig a deep hole so that the dog would not smell once it began to rot.
He told Magistrate XP Menyiwe the principal stood alongside them as they filled in the hole, tossing sand on the trapped dog.
Mfengu says minutes later an animal protection group arrived and instructed them to remove the animal.
The cops came shortly afterwards and arrested him and a colleague, Mkhumbaza Mcedani, who had allegedly helped to bury the dog.
Makhaphela was arrested a short while later.
But the principal’s defence lawyer Wildre Fourie argued that he was nowhere near the scene and had not told them to bury the animal.
The case has now been postponed to May 10.
The dog has since been adopted and called Lilly after it was named Warrior when it was rescued.
Daily Voice