‘You roll your eyes’: Matlala advocate takes on judge in courtroom clash

An advocate in the trial of Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and his four co-accused stopped mid-argument on Thursday afternoon to tell the judge she did not appreciate the way he was looking at her.

Advocate Annelene Van den Heever, who represents Matlala and his wife Tsakani, was cross-examining the state’s first witness when Judge Cassim Moosa began questioning where her line of questioning was headed.

“Sorry, can we just stop,” Van den Heever said.

“Pause for a second. 

“When I’m trying to address your lordship, you look up in the sky and roll your eyes and then you shake your head.

“That’s not necessary, my lord. 

“With the greatest of respect, I’m trying to do my work as counsel here.”

Moosa said he simply wanted to understand where she was going.

He asked whether the defence was going to argue that taxi boss Joe “Ferrari” Sibanyoni’s red Ferrari had never been at the Centurion Golf Estate on the night of the shooting, given that it does not appear on the police sketch plan.

Van den Heever said she was not obliged to put a version at that stage.

“My lord, I am entitled to test the veracity of this witness’s evidence,” she said.

She said she was entitled to cross-examine on the objective evidence recorded in the local criminal record centre file, and asked to continue.

Moosa allowed her to proceed.

Matlala, a 49-year-old tenderpreneur, is on trial with alleged gunmen Musa Kekana and Tiego Floyd Mabusela, his wife and Nthabiseng Zandile Nzama.

All five pleaded not guilty on Monday to 25 charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, money laundering, fraud and the illegal possession of prohibited firearms and ammunition.

The state alleged Matlala ordered three shootings between August 2022 and January 2024, targeting Sibanyoni, his ex-girlfriend, actress Tebogo Thobejane, and music producer Seunkie “DJ Vetteys” Mokubung.

Several other people were caught in the gunfire alongside them, which is why the accused face 11 counts of attempted murder, each carrying a minimum sentence of life imprisonment upon conviction.

Van den Heever finished her cross-examination of security guard Bethuel Mzamo Cele, who survived the Sibanyoni ambush, by attacking both his evidence and his conduct in the witness box.

She told him her legal team had consulted a ballistics expert the previous day, and that his evidence that a 9mm round could not pass through a car door and into a person was wrong.

“It’s false,” she said.

She then told him she had watched him since his cross-examination began two days earlier.

“You are belligerent. You answer questions with questions. You just refuse to cooperate in this court,” she said.

“And I’m going to argue to the court that the court must therefore reject your evidence.”

Cele rejected that.

“That is not true,” he said.

Through the interpreter, he added that he was a small person appearing in a big court, and that he would not undermine it.

Cele also asked the court to protect him and his children.

The sketch plan Van den Heever relied on was provisionally admitted as an exhibit.

Advocate Timothy Chauke, for Nzama, told the court he had no questions for Cele.

State advocate Elize le Roux then asked that her re-examination of Cele stand over.

She said the two witnesses who would authenticate the video footage from the scene were not available, and that she still had to plan when to present that evidence.

Moosa on Tuesday refused to let the state play the footage until its authenticity is proven, including that it had not been doctored or subjected to artificial intelligence.

The application was not opposed, and Cele was excused for the time being.

Le Roux then moved on to the state’s next witness, a private security officer listed 88th and last on the updated witness list.

She asked that the cameras be switched off and his face not be shown, though she had no objection to the audio being recorded and streamed.

The defence did not oppose that, and Moosa granted it.

“You can record the audio. You can fly the audio, but not the visual,” he told the media.

The court heard the witness saw the arrest of Kekana and two other people, though he did not take part in it, and that he will be taken through photographs from a police docket containing more than 380 images.

That evidence is heading for a fight.

Kekana’s counsel, advocate Riaan Gissing, told the court he would object to the admissibility of everything flowing from the arrest, including alleged utterances, the search and seizure that followed, items collected, their analysis, and subsequent downloads under the Cybercrimes Act.

“It is also our contention that such evidence was obtained in a manner that violated accused number one’s constitutional rights,” Gissing said.

He said admitting it would render Kekana’s trial unfair and be detrimental to the administration of justice, and asked that a trial within a trial be held to decide the question.

Moosa said he did not want any contamination of the evidence or any possibility of a violation of the accused’s fair trial rights.

“I don’t want the waters to be muddied,” he said.

Le Roux said she would alert the court when she reached that point in the witness’s evidence.

The witness was sworn in and told the court he had never testified before, and that he was nervous.

Moosa took him through the court process and said his evidence would start on Friday at 11.30am.

IOL