Precisely 10 minutes before the official 10am start of this morning's sessions in the Johannesburg High Court we were alerted to the fact that a judgement was going to be given in yet another round of the Scorpions vs disgraced police chief Jackie Selebi. None of us on duty had been covering the ongoing saga and nobody knew what was going on. I drew the short straw, and got the assignment.
One of the news editors quickly printed out some background, I filled in a car slip and charged down to the basement where a driver was waiting. I closed my eyes in prayer as he did 0 to 100km's an hour through city traffic and dropped me off at the front entrance, mere seconds later.
The hearing itself was a tedious and boring as I expected. No big dramas.
As I tried to leave I encountered a whole stack of women in purple t-shirts protesting. They were standing in solidarity with a woman named Buyisiwe who was gang-raped by six men in 2005. Posters detailing each step in her stalling court case were tied to the palisade fencing in front of the court. It was a truly horrifying account and my heart went out to the poor soul.
The protestors however, unfortunately seemed to attract more curious stares than pledges of support. They were angry and loud. One sported a giant badge appropriately sporting the logo "Pissed Off Woman". Some had duct tape over their mouths. The main attraction was a woman with a shaved head in a white robe and leather sandals splattered with fake blood, lying on the steps leading up to the grand court entranceway. She had a bandage over her eyes with JUSTICE writted across it, presumably for those who didn't get who she was supposed to be. She had the scales of justice in one hand and a giant gold cardboard sword in the other.
This in itself would have been a fairly striking image. But she would shriek out: "Why is there no justice?" to anyone walking past, which scared quite a few people and had them stepping off smartly in alarm.
I truly hope the angry women eventually managed to achieve the point they were trying to make. And that justice will eventually be served for Buyisiwe.
Showing posts with label Johannesburg High Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johannesburg High Court. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
A shampoo bottle
Today, like most days, unraveled unexpectedly.
I was supposed to spend my day at the Johannesburg High Court covering a murder trial. It was the scheduled start of proceedings against a man with a floppy grey mullet. Unbelievably enough, the hairstyle was not among the offences listed on the charge sheet which stated that he had regularly assaulted the woman he lived with "as though married" in the back room of a house in Kempton Park. On one such occasion the injuries he inflicted caused her untimely death. The state had a line of witnesses all ready to testify to this.
I had discovered this case accidentally when hunting down a different love triangle murder case that had taken place in a caravan in someone's backyard. So what made Mullet Man's case different from your garden variety bludgeoning to death of a loved one? A shampoo bottle. A 350ml red plastic bottle of Palmolive aloe vera for all hair types in fact. This had been found inside the victim during the post mortem. It had been rammed into her anus during the assault.
It was one of those surreal experiences where you feel all weak as you sit back and look to one side and see Mullet Man in his lekker-tight jeans and leg irons and then look to the other and see the cloaked, stern-faced prosecutor with shampoo bottle in an evidence bag on the table in front of him. Behind were the witnesses with their interesting array of hairstyles and missing teeth and clothing styles that you wouldn't know where to begin looking if you ever wanted to replicate the look. And you wonder how it all came to this....
This morning Mullet Man was supposed to plead to the charges and I was going to write about it. And then the paper decided I didn't need to go anymore. The story was just too horrible. The pages are already too full of horror stories. So I didn't go.
Instead I planned a few features, spoke to an amazing woman I will write about soon and got the lowdown on railway police successes over the past two months. Not quite a front page blazer, but a lot happier indeed.
As my snowed-in sister-in-law mailed me from freezing England after we'd shared our day's troubles: "Hey, at least I don't have a shampoo bottle stuck up my bum - it's all about perspective isn't it?"
I was supposed to spend my day at the Johannesburg High Court covering a murder trial. It was the scheduled start of proceedings against a man with a floppy grey mullet. Unbelievably enough, the hairstyle was not among the offences listed on the charge sheet which stated that he had regularly assaulted the woman he lived with "as though married" in the back room of a house in Kempton Park. On one such occasion the injuries he inflicted caused her untimely death. The state had a line of witnesses all ready to testify to this.
I had discovered this case accidentally when hunting down a different love triangle murder case that had taken place in a caravan in someone's backyard. So what made Mullet Man's case different from your garden variety bludgeoning to death of a loved one? A shampoo bottle. A 350ml red plastic bottle of Palmolive aloe vera for all hair types in fact. This had been found inside the victim during the post mortem. It had been rammed into her anus during the assault.
It was one of those surreal experiences where you feel all weak as you sit back and look to one side and see Mullet Man in his lekker-tight jeans and leg irons and then look to the other and see the cloaked, stern-faced prosecutor with shampoo bottle in an evidence bag on the table in front of him. Behind were the witnesses with their interesting array of hairstyles and missing teeth and clothing styles that you wouldn't know where to begin looking if you ever wanted to replicate the look. And you wonder how it all came to this....
This morning Mullet Man was supposed to plead to the charges and I was going to write about it. And then the paper decided I didn't need to go anymore. The story was just too horrible. The pages are already too full of horror stories. So I didn't go.
Instead I planned a few features, spoke to an amazing woman I will write about soon and got the lowdown on railway police successes over the past two months. Not quite a front page blazer, but a lot happier indeed.
As my snowed-in sister-in-law mailed me from freezing England after we'd shared our day's troubles: "Hey, at least I don't have a shampoo bottle stuck up my bum - it's all about perspective isn't it?"
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