The Ventersdorp Magistrate’s Court worked overtime on Wednesday as it tried to complete the bail application of Chris Mahlangu, one of the people accused of murdering former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche.
Speaking through a xiTsonga interpreter, Mahlangu’s uncle, Isaiah Ngobeni, detailed the accused’s extended family to the court. Magistrate Magaola Foso needed to decide whether Mahlangu would be a flight risk if granted bail and determine why he did not have an identity document.
The first time he met Mahlangu was when his brother took him to a creche in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe, in 1989 when Mahlangu was about “five or six”.
He said when police told him about Terre’Blanche’s murder, they never said Mahlangu had committed the offence, but that he was a suspect.
He did not believe it because he did not know Mahlangu was working in the Ventersdorp area.
“He is a humble person, he respects me, he never had a grudge or quarrel with me. He was not a person to be aggrieved,” said Ngobeni.
“He is not a violent person and always, he was obedient. When I talked to him he always said, ‘Uncle forgive me if I offend you’.”
Foso asked whether Mahlangu’s family would send him back to South Africa if he went to Zimbabwe, knowing he was in trouble.
“His mom and dad won’t push him into the fire,” Ngobeni said.
Foso said he asked this because if Mahlangu went back to Zimbabwe, Ngobeni would be the only link with him to get him back.
“Do you see the picture?” said Foso, pointing out that for a year Ngobeni had not known Mahlangu’s whereabouts.
Mahlangu and a 15-year-old boy are accused of murdering Terre’Blanche on his farm on April 3.
Amendment bid dismissed
Earlier, the court dismissed an application to amend a charge against Mahlangu.
Mahlangu’s lawyer, Puna Moroko, argued that the alleged offence was unplanned and therefore a schedule five matter, rather than planned and premeditated, which would make it a schedule six crime.
“Our version is that the accused acted in self-defence and the two cannot be married — self defence and premeditated murder.
“A ruling on this point is very crucial. Any other route, in my view, will not be the correct one,” he said.
At the last hearing, the court heard that Terre’Blanche was hit and stabbed 28 times.
His body was unrecognisable to investigators, who arrived on the scene after Mahlangu and his co-accused handed themselves to police.
Foso dismissed Moroko’s application for the charge to be amended, ruling that it could be addressed during argument. — Sapa