Speaking outside the Knysna Regional Court on Thursday, October 9. Butler said, “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In court, the state prosecutor Chamelle Bastion tried to establish during her cross-examination how the six men got to the farm in Ladywood and exactly where the suspects were standing while the fight was taking place.
The court case follows the arrest of ten men for taking part in an illegal dog-fighting on May 14, 2011. Since then four - Billy Marais (the owner of the farm), Johannes (Fanie) Joubert, Ferdinand Endeman and Anthony Blake - pleaded guilty of the contravention of the Animal Protection Act. They were sentenced on July 29, 2013.
Following many postponements, the remaining six men's trial resumed on Wednesday, October 8 and ran until Friday, October 11 when it was postponed again until March 25 and 26 next year.
The state needs to decide whether Butler, Rudi Wall, his two brothers Peter and Donald, and friends Yorick Grobbelaar and Anton van Blerk visited Marais’ farm for the dog-fight or whether they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although three days had been set aside for the trial, Bastion only managed to complete questioning the first accused, Rudi Wall by the end of the third day. Wall testified that he didn’t know Marais and that he had been invited there by friend and co-accused, Grobbelaar. According to Wall, he did not hear anything and from where he and his five friends were standing in the kitchen, could not see that there was a dogfight in the lounge. Bastion questioned this since the kitchen in question measured only 4.15m² and formed part of an open-plan lounge. In the lounge and against the kitchen partition (measuring 2.5m long and 1.4m high) stood a constructed pit of 5m x 5m.
Bastion’s next question was whether it did not upset Wall to see Marais’ five dogs chained by thick chains outside the house. In response to Wall's vague answer, Bastion asked him whether he had a dog and whether he also chained his dog. He replied that he owned a dog, and that while he did chain it, he did not use such thick chain. Bastion then proceeded by showing the court, Magistrate Thembelike Anna and Wall's lawyer Ricardo Pietersen, a photo of his dog, a pitbull terrier called Apollo, that Wall had posted to a social media site. Tied around the animal's neck is an enormous chain.
Outside of court, Butler admitted that he did notice “the cage” and that he did see Marais put two of his pitbulls into it that day, but he was under the impression that Marais wanted them to mate because the one dog, a bitch, was apparently on heat. He said it was barely five minutes later that the police stormed into the kitchen and ordered them all to lie down. Butler then accused the investigating officer, Marius van Huyssteen of police brutality, racial pigeonholing and animal cruelty. He said that at the time of arrest, Van Huyssteen slapped him in the face and called him a “Boesman”. He said that when the police entered the house, Marais wanted to stop the dogfight immediately, but the police insisted that they carry on, saying "No, you wanted them to fight, so let them fight." He further alleged that the officers spent about half an hour taking photos with their cellphones, before the dogs were eventually moved apart. He claimed that it was the police’s fault that the dogs got injured.
In February this year, Butler and one of his co-accused Anton van Blerk were convicted for another dog-fighting incident that took place in East London in 2008. However, Karel du Toit, the complainant in the current trial and former chairperson of the Knysna Animal Welfare Society (KAWS), explained that the 2008 conviction may not be held against them in a court of law, because the two were arrested for that incident before the current case.
Click here for a previous article.
This photo was taken after police entered a house where illegal dogfights were being hosted. Ten men were arrested.
A police officer took this photo of an injured dog used in illegal dog-fighting on a farm in Ladywood, Plettenberg Bay on May 14, 2011.
ARTICLE: INGRIDE LEHMENSICH-BOTHA
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