Advocate Malesela Teffo, who is representing four of the men accused of murdering Senzo Meyiwa, has been arrested inside the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
The trial of the suspected murderers had just been postponed when an investigating officer and a number of police officers approached Teffo.
News24 overheard there was a warrant of arrest issued by the court as Teffo had missed a court appearance for a separate matter in which he is the accused.
Teffo was arrested in July 2020 and charged with common assault and trespassing after allegedly trying to enter a South African Police Services building to represent a client in a labour dispute.
The court earlier heard from Teffo’s instructing attorney in the Meyiwa case there was a tip-off he would be arrested.
Teffo claimed he was being arrested because Police Minister Bheki Cele did not want him on the Meyiwa case.
Baloyi had taken issue with Teffo, on Tuesday, asking about ballistic and DNA results from Mosia, the police’s forensic field worker, who collected the physical evidence at the crime scene at Khumalo’s Vosloorus, Gauteng, family home. Meyiwa was Khumalo’s lover at the time of his October 2014 murder.
Baloyi said Mosia was testifying as a forensic field worker, and that the state would be calling ballistics and DNA experts who would be best placed to answer Teffo’s questions.
“We respectfully submit that there is a danger inherent in allowing such cross-examination, in that such speculative evidence will be elevated by the defense… and seek to show a discrepancy with the ballistic expert, or be used to confront other witnesses with such evidence, when such evidence should not have been allowed to start with,” Baloyi said, reading from his prepared heads of argument.
Baloyi was concerned with an important concession made on Tuesday by Mosia that the murder weapon, which the state alleges was found on Ncube, accused number three, and was a 9mm Parabellum, could have been a revolver due to there no being any cartridge cases found at the scene.
Revolvers, Mosia acknowledged, do not expel cartridge cases, or the rear part of a bullet.
But Teffo dismissed Baloyi’s objection application, saying, if need be, he would request Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela to adjourn proceedings so that Baloyi could draft the questions he wanted to be asked. The sarcasm in Teffo’s tone was evident.
Maumela gave Teffo and Mshololo an opportunity to draft and file their own heads of argument to Baloyi’s application before the judge could make a ruling.
When his cross-examination resumed, Teffo spent much of it putting it to Mosia that the Meyiwa crime scene was staged, and that brigadier Philani Ndlovu, Gauteng’s former top detective who called Mosia to Vosloorus at 11.45pm on the night of the killing, remained at the scene to “manage” Mosia.
Teffo further alleged that Mosia did not take pictures of the bedroom in which, he said, he had confined the survivors, because there were no survivors at the house, given they all allegedly slept at Thwala’s home.
Teffo claimed that a conspiratorial meeting — involving Ndlovu, former Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya, and former Gauteng head of safety Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane — was held hours before Mosia’s arrival to plan the alleged contamination of the scene.
“Ndlovu was not there, he was just feeding you with wrong information,” Teffo alleged.
Mosia denied that the scene was tampered with, and said the survivors were in the house with him while he was doing his forensic work.
The trial was due to resume after lunch on Thursday.