Seven youths each received 18 year prison sentences in the Port Elizabeth Supreme Court on 23 March after being convicted of the murder of a policeman in the Port Elizabeth township of Soweto in April 1985. According to medical evidence led in mitigation all those sentenced were aged 16 or 17 at the time the policeman was killed.
Those jailed were Mzimkulu Sisa MJADU (19), Samson KOLWENI (19), Thembinkosi Elvis MATANI (19), Aubrey Monele ZAMXAKA (19), Khayalethu FESTILE (18), Zamxolo Patric MFIHLO (18) and one not named.
Three other defendants were acquitted after defence lawyers were able to show that the evidence of several state witnesses was inconsistent and contradictory. This was, they said, because in the period in question 'several policemen' had been killed in the same area, all by the same 'necklace' method. Different incidents had become confused.
Earlier the judge had described all the police witnesses as 'responsible, reliable and honest'. He had also ruled that statements made to the police by the accused were admissible, despite claims by the defence that they had been extracted by the use of force and despite his own criticism in court of a Port Elizabeth magistrate for failing to investigate an allegation by Mjadu that police had assaulted him.
The judge dismissed defence arguments that the accused had acted from political motives and that they had been swept along on a tide of popular anger at the injustices of the apartheid system. Their association with the UDF 'was not mitigation [of their offence] but rather aggravation.'
An application by the defence for leave to appeal was refused.
