A police sergeant has denied that accused number one in the Matlala matter was assaulted or suffocated while in police custody, in evidence going to the heart of the trial-within-a-trial now before the Johannesburg High Court.
Sergeant Mayisela John Ledwaba was one of three officers in the vehicle that transported Musa Kekana from 8th road, Q, where he was arrested on 17 April 2024 to 5th road Q, a second address, where a search was conducted.
Advocate Riaan Gissing, for Kekana, put his client’s version to the witness, that he was interrogated inside the house, that his head was covered with a duvet, that he was punched all over his body by officers, and that he was repeatedly suffocated by Captain Sekgobela.
On Kekana’s version, it was the suffocation that caused him to cough up blood.
Ledwaba rejected each allegation.
He told the court the duvet and the punching did not happen, that there was no interrogation, and that Kekana was never suffocated.
He said he had heard only a request that the house be opened.
Asked why he was so certain, Ledwaba said that had a suffocation taken place, he would have seen it.
Ledwaba does not dispute that Kekana coughed up blood. According to Ledwaba, the coughing began inside the house at the second address.
He said that Captain Sekgobela asked Kekana about it and he told him that he’d been admitted to hospital.
He told the court that Captain Sekgobela then said he would call an ambulance.
Asked whether anyone assisted Kekana at the scene, Ledwaba said he did not recall police officers acting as paramedics, which he said was why an ambulance was called.
He said he saw an ambulance at the second address, parked in the middle of the road, but could not say where Kekana was in relation to it.
Photographs shown to the witness include one which he identified as depicting the jersey worn by the accused and the blood he had described.
Ledwaba’s denials are qualified by his own evidence about where he was during the day.
He told the court there was a stage at which he was not in the presence of the accused, although he said he was with him most of the time.
He also said there was a stage at which he was not with Captain Sekgobela, and that he did not know whether the captain remained at the second address throughout.
Asked whether Kekana was taken back to the arrest scene at some point and later returned, Ledwaba said he did not know what vehicle he was brought back in, but that he knew he was brought back.
Captain Sekgobela’s evidence, as put to the witness, is that Kekana never left the second address at all.
An independent witness who was present at the arrest, and whose identity is subject to a court order, has told the court that Kekana was taken away by officers and returned later in the day coughing blood into a towel, before an ambulance collected him.
On the searches conducted at the second address, Ledwaba told the court that Captain Sekgobela asked the accused for permission to search the yard and the house, and that permission was given.
Gissing put that no permission was granted and that the accused’s rights were never explained to him. He also put that the gate was opened manually by an officer, and that Kekana’s keys had been taken from him at the arrest scene, with an officer sent back to fetch them.
Ledwaba disputed each of those propositions, maintaining that Kekana searched himself, produced a remote and opened the gate.
Gissing put to him that this account does not appear in his statement. Ledwaba said he would need to see the statement before he could comment.
The trial-within-a-trial continues.
