End of line for Molosi killers

Update

KNYSNA NEWS - Murdered Knysna councillor Victor Molosi's killers seem to have reached the end of the line after a Supreme Court of Appeal bid failed.

Former Knysna independent councillor Velile Waxa and municipal official Mawande Makhala, who were sentenced in 2019 to life behind bars for the murder of Molosi, last week lost their court appeal against the use of incriminating statements that cemented their convictions.

Waxa, Makhala and co-accused Vela Dumile were sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted for, among others, conspiracy to commit murder. Molosi, who was a Ward 4 councillor, was gunned down just a few metres from his house in 2018 after leaving Concordia High School where he had attended a school governing body meeting.

After the conviction and sentencing, Waxa and Makhala approached the Supreme Court of Appeal to challenge the admission of statements during their murder trial which incriminated them both. The statements played a key role in their conviction.

The central question of the appeal was whether the trial court had been correct to admit the statements given by state witness Luzuko Makhala into evidence.

In one of two statements Makhala recounted that on 18 July 2018, he had received a call from Waxa, who said that he would be sending him R1 000 to purchase petrol to transport Dumile to Knysna.

On 20 July 2018, Makhala withdrew the money, and Waxa called him to confirm whether he had received it. Police asked Makhala whether he would confirm this in a statement. He agreed, and this was done. Makhala also handed over his Nokia cellphone.

Both statements incriminated Waxa, Dumile and Makhala himself in the murder of Molosi. The trial court admitted both statements into evidence and relied upon them to convict the accused of murder and the related counts.

During the trial, the state called Makhala to give evidence. Without forewarning to the prosecution, Makhala recanted the contents of his first and second statements that incriminated himself and the accused in the murder.

The prosecution then sought to have Makhala declared a hostile witness. The trial court did so. Makhala testified that the incriminating portions of the statements were fabrications that the police forced him to record in the statements.

He claimed that he was intimidated by the police and threatened with assault and as a result, made statements that he thought the police wanted from him.

The appellants challenged the trial court's admission and use of the statements. "If these statements should not have been admitted into evidence or the use of this evidence was otherwise excluded, then, given the decisive centrality of the statements, the appellants' convictions are unsound. This was common ground between the parties, and this position is not to be doubted," the judgement read.

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On 18 February, the court found that each of the challenges brought by the appellants failed and that the two statements made by Makhala to the police had not been unlawfully obtained:

"That evidence afforded proof of the appellants' complicity in the murder of Molosi and the further charges associated with his murder.

"There was no failing on the part of the trial judge, neither in cautioning himself against the frailties of the evidence of Makhala as an accomplice, nor in his declaration of Makhala as a hostile witness.

"The trial judge correctly found that there was sufficient evidence to corroborate the statements of Makhala and that, upon consideration of all the evidence, the state had discharged its burden of proof."

Based on this, the duo's appeal was dismissed.

Velile Waxa