Three days into the trial of alleged underworld figure Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and his four co-accused, the case has narrowed to one key question.
It is not whether the shootings happened, but whether the State can prove who carried them out.
That question lies at the heart of the evidence given by the State’s first witness, security officer Bethwell Mzamo Cele, and the three sworn statements he has made since the shooting at a Centurion golf estate in August 2022.
Cele’s account of the attack itself is vivid and, across his statements, broadly consistent.
He describes a red Ferrari and a white VW Golf 7 arriving late at night, followed by a white BMW. Men then opened fire, and he returned fire with 15 rounds from a prone position as bullets came back at him.
He says he saw three men in the BMW, two of whom got out.
On these central features, his statements largely align.
But on the key issue in the trial, Cele has been consistent in a way that weakens the State’s case.
From the statement taken in the early hours after the shooting to later accounts, he has maintained that he could not identify the attackers.
“I will not be able to identify the shooters in the white BMW as it was dark,” he said in one statement.
“I cannot identify the suspects because I did not see their faces clearly,” he said in another.
That concession explains why so much of this week’s proceedings has focused not on what happened, but on how the reliability of what a witness saw can be tested.
The State sought to introduce video footage of the incident, but the defence objected, arguing that its authenticity had not been established.
When the defence, in turn, attempted to put its own photographs of the scene to Cele, the State raised the same objection, and the court held both sides to the same standard.
The photographs, taken about four years after the shooting, were ruled inadmissible.
A judicial inspection of the scene has also been proposed, with debate over whether it would need to take place at night to have any evidentiary value.
Cele was asked to sketch the scene but declined, saying he was “not an artist”, before describing his position and the distances verbally.
Underlying all of this is a dispute over Cele’s statements themselves.
The defence highlighted differences between the statements, particularly regarding the time of the attack. One statement places it at about 22:35 but also records that Cele could not be certain because security guards are generally not allowed to carry cellphones while on duty.
Cele went further than merely disputing the defence’s interpretation. He told the court he believed police had altered his statement, describing it as “fraud”.
Those allegations remain untested, and the court will assess them only after hearing all the evidence.
None of this determines the outcome of the case. Cele is only the first witness, his cross-examination has not yet concluded, and a third defence counsel is still expected to question him before the State re-examines him.
The man the State alleges was the intended target, taxi tycoon Joe “Ferrari” Sibanyoni, has also yet to testify.
But the shape of the contest is becoming clear.
In a trial centred on three shootings and 25 charges, the State’s challenge is not proving that the attacks occurred. Its challenge is proving that the accused were the men who carried them out.
And its first witness has, from the outset and consistently, maintained that he could not see the faces of the men who opened fire.
