A witness who spent the morning of 17 April 2024 discussing a wheel rim with Musa Kekana told the Johannesburg High Court on Monday that police drove Kekana away from the scene and returned with him hours later coughing blood into a towel.
The evidence came in a trial-within-a-trial before Judge Cassim Moosa, in which the court must decide what may be admitted against Kekana.
Kekana is charged alongside four others, including Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.
The witness cannot be named. Judge Moosa granted an order earlier on Monday, on the State’s application and over the objection of counsel for accused three and four, prohibiting publication of his name and the broadcast of his image.
He runs a motor vehicle business and had known Kekana for five to six years, a relationship he described as primarily commercial.
On the morning of 17 April 2024 Kekana phoned him early, asking about a Mercedes-Benz rim. The witness had one, without a tyre, and offered it on the understanding that it could be returned if it did not fit.
Kekana arrived between 7:30 and 8:00, driving a white Mercedes Viano, with a second man the witness did not know. The witness fixed the time by a commitment he could not move that morning.
The three were talking beside the vehicle when police arrived. He told the Court that the police fired at least two shots.
He said that the officers shouted at them and told to get out of the vehicles, raise their hands and lie down. All three were cuffed with their hands behind their backs and made to lie face down on the grass. The witness said he could not identify any of the officers, then or now because they wore masks.
Kekana was then taken away by the police officers. The witness said he did not see what vehicle he left in. He was still at the scene, cuffed, when Kekana was brought back later that day.
He told the Court that when Kekana was brought back to the first scene he was coughing up blood and he asked for medical attention.
The witness said he was three or four steps from Kekana, both of them placed against a wall. A paramedic attended and spoke to Kekana. An ambulance arrived later and took him away. The witness said that was the last he saw of him, and that he did not know where Kekana was taken.
Asked when he had first heard the coughing, he said it began after Kekana was returned to the scene, and that he had not heard it at any point that morning.
His account went essentially unchallenged. Counsel for Kekana put his client’s version to him point by point, the address, the Viano, the driver’s seat, the rim, the shots, the commands, the cuffing and the witness agreed with each.
The matter continues tomorrow, 8 September.
