Day three of the trial of alleged underworld figure Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala turned on a single, sharpening question: how to test what the State’s first witness actually saw on the night of the shooting he survived.
Security officer Bethwell Mzamo Cele, returned to the stand at the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday for a second day of cross-examination. This time facing Advocate Nardus Grové for accused No 2, Tiego Floyd Mabusela.
The defence teams have divided their cross-examination between them, with Grové pressing the conditions at the scene and what Cele was able to observe.
That line of questioning matters because, in his own sworn statements, Cele has said he could not identify the attackers.
The shooting he described, one of the incidents behind the attempted murder charges happened late at night, at around 22:45.
Cele told the Court he returned fire on a white BMW but could not see the faces of those inside ‘as it was dark.’
Much of the morning was spent arguing about how to present the scene to the court.
When Grové tried to show the witness his own photographs of the estate, the State objected, arguing they had not been properly authenticated. It was the same reason the defence had used the previous day to stop the State from presenting video footage of the incident.
The court sustained the objection, ruling that the photographs had not been authenticated or disclosed.
Grové proposed an inspection in loco, a physical visit to the scene.
The question of whether such an inspection would need to take place at night, to match the conditions Cele described, remained under discussion.
The tension became most apparent when Cele was asked to draw a sketch of the crime scene.
He refused, telling the court he was “not an artist.”
The State objected, asking whether the layout of the scene was even in dispute, the defence maintained the questioning was relevant.
Cele grew combative as the questioning pressed on detail.
He declined to answer most questions about the surroundings, he told counsel: “I wasn’t there to count trees but to guard.”
The proceedings took a striking turn when the defence questioned Cele on the timing of his statements.
He told the court his first statement had been taken at 2:33am on the night of the shooting, in the hours immediately afterwards, and that a second followed five days later.
Confronted with the differences between the statements, Cele alleged that police had altered his account.
“This is fraud,” he told the court, saying his statement appeared to have been “taken somewhere” and its contents changed.
Of the second statement, he said: “The officers were desperate for information.”
The allegation, a State witness accusing the police of tampering with his own statement is a significant one in a case that already turns on the reliability of what Cele saw and said.
The exchanges point to what is emerging as the central battleground of the trial: identification.
In a matter with five accused, the State must link specific individuals to specific acts, yet its first witness has consistently maintained from a statement made the day after the shooting to a later typed affidavit that he cannot identify the men who opened fire.
Matlala and his co-accused , Musa Kekana, Tiego Floyd Mabusela, Tsakani Matlala and Nthabiseng Nzama , face 25 charges, including 11 counts of attempted murder linked to three shootings allegedly committed between August 2022 and January 2024. All five pleaded not guilty.
Cele’s cross-examination continues.
