(CAPE OF GOOD HOPE PROVINCIAL DIVISION)

DATE:								2 FEBRUARY 1993							
In the matter of:
 THE STATE 
versus
1.	MELVIN SWENI
2.	JOHANNES WILLIAMS
3.	SINDILE SWENI

This has been a long trial. It started in July last year in Knysna; it continued for a week there; it continued for a week in Knysna in November; and started again with argument by your advocates yesterday. It is now eight months since this trial started. For the delay you are not responsible. Many State witnesses have been called, some of them were recalled to give evidence. All three of you gave evidence on your own behalf and one witness in addition was called on behalf of one of you. What appeared to have been a complicated case was in the end a fairly simple one. This was because the main, if indeed only substantial defence advanced by all three of you, was the defence of an alibi. I will deal with the alibi in due course.

the deceased was brutally hacked to death. There were a score or more stab  wounds on his body. There was blood everywhere. It is unlikely in the extreme that all these stab wounds were inflicted by only one of the three of you and that the other two should have blamelessly stood apart.

Indeed, there is evidence that accused number 2 participated in the stabbing, albeit allegedly - that is allegedly by him - under duress. Not that he said this in the witness box in the trial itself, this being inconsistent with an alibi defence. Accused number 1 was found in possession of a musical instrument belonging to the deceased. Accused number 2 had the deceased's diamond ring; to use a colloquialism 15 accused number 3 "spilt the beans" in their entirety to a fellow prisoner in the cells. There is an abundance of corroboration and participation in the death and in the robbery.

expect in the circumstances, relatively unsophisticated and absolute consistency on their part in their evidence could never have been expected. Indeed, had there been total consistency in their testimony, their evidence would very likely have been suspect.

In the first place they both impressed me as truthful and credible 1 5 witnesses. In the second place, threats to induce confessions were totally unnecessary as accused number 1 and number 2 were found in possession of the deceased's property and accused number 3 had recounted the full story to one Jack Quire(?), a person in the cell with him. I accept the evidence of that witness, how else and from where 20 could he have obtained so detailed an account or one so consistent with objective evidence. In the third place, both Zeelie and Oliver were frank in admitting to the commission of an assault on accused number 2 when they pounced on him at the time of his arrest. After all, the deceased's firearm was still missing and so was the ammunition.   Obviously an  assault of that kind does not render their evidence untrustworthy.

It is a fair inference that the murder preceded or was contemporaneous with the robbery. Certainly it must have preceded the taking of the deceased's motor vehicle. It is, to my mind, clear that in order to prevent subsequent identification of the three of you by the deceased, certainly the identification of accused number 2 whom he knew well, that he had to be silenced permanently if they were to evade arrest and prosecution. There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that accused number 2 or, for that matter, numbers 1 or 3, wore balaclavas 20 or stockings over their faces, so the deceased had to be killed, an activity which they all participated in the gruesome manner in which he was killed.

The presentation of a false alibi has been authoritatively stated, amounts to no evidence at all. I do not and I need not go so far as to say that the falsity of the alibis lends credibility to the State's case and what it does do is to leave the State's case unanswered save for any successful attack on the credibility of that case and the witnesses called by the State to make it out. I hold that the attacks made in this respect

In short and in summary it is the unanimous finding of this Court that each one of you is guilty as charged, that is that you are guilty of      20 murder; you are guilty of robbery with aggravating circumstances; you are guilty of the unlawful possession of a firearm; and you are guilty of the unlawful possession of ammunition.