Adv Malesela Teffo on the Senzo Meyiwa Saga: A path back to Truth, Justice, Peace & the Rule of Law

On Wednesday 8 June 2022 the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial was again abruptly adjourned, because Advocate Zandile Mshololo, the defence counsel for accused number five, wanted time to study another case docket that she had only just received. The only case docket that she had seen was Case # 636. It indicts five men who allegedly conspired to murder Senzo Meyiwa, and is premised on the assumption that there is a mastermind – still to be named – who wanted Senzo dead. But the State Prosecutor Adv George Baloyi had only disclosed Case Docket 636 in the pre trail process. Case Docket 375 only surfaced on Monday and Advocate Mshololo demanded time to study it to see what ramifications it had for her client’s presumed innocence and her defence thereof. The theory embedded in that docket is that the fatal shot was an accidental discharge of a loaded revolver that one of seven survivors of the tragic incident, Longwe Twala had brought into a house party at Kelly Khumalo’s mothers’ home in Vosloorus in October 2014. Many journalists seem to have also been surprised to learn of the existence of the second docket. But the fact of its existence had already been revealed by Advocate Malesela Teffo who represents the accused one to four, six months ago at a conference hosted by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, titled Captured State to Police State: The Senzo Meyiwa Case and other SAPS Horror Stories to which the media were invited. A 90-minute film of that conference is up on my YouTube channel, but given the current controversy over the two dockets, I thought it would be helpful to pull out Advocate Teffo explaining the mystery of how two dockets for the same case emerged, and why he agreed take over the defence represent four of the five currently accused from the Legal Aid Board to not only defend their plea of not guilty, but of wrongful arrest.