The first week of the trial of eight men accused of multiple murders at the Glebelands Hostel complex in Umlazi has not only revealed the precarious state of the criminal justice system, but showed the extreme lengths prosecutors are expected to employ in protecting key witnesses facing the real threat of assassination.

On Thursday 29 August the State prosecutor notified the Pietermaritzburg High Court that he would be applying to have witnesses testify in-camera from next week, fearing they would be intimidated from the public gallery.

But advocate Dorian Paver told journalists the media would be allowed to cover proceedings — as long as photographs, names and addresses were not reported.

Four “crucial” witnesses are in the witness protection programme, some having been there since 2016. Others are still living at the hostel, refusing to be stripped of their freedom of movement. Some have armed themselves. Heavily.

“It’s the people in the gallery — the spectators — that we can’t have here. They spook the witnesses,” Paver told Daily Maverick after Thursday’s proceedings ended. It’s a valid concern. At bail hearings for the accused in 2018, one ashen-faced observer told this journalist he had seen known “hitmen” in the gallery.

Understandably, Paver is taking no chances.

No one knows the dates the witness will appear, including advocate Martin Krog, who has been retained by former Durban Central plainclothes detective Bhekukwazi Mdweshu and his cousin, accused number five, Ncomekile Ntshangase.

“He won’t tell me so I don’t see why he would tell you,” Krog snapped earlier in the week when questioned by Daily Maverick.

Legal Aid South Africa’s advocate Dianne Franklin and legal aid attorney Xolani Sindane also have no clue. “He won’t tell us,” Franklin shrugged.

Several witnesses who were able to identify members of the alleged cabal have already been killed since 2014 — the most widely known being Glebelands resident Sipho Ndovela.

He was gunned down in the Umlazi Magistrate’s Court precinct in 2015 after his police protection was pulled.

The long-awaited trial of the Glebelands Eight started on Monday, but was rolled over within four minutes due to outstanding documentation.

Tuesday started with Paver reading the charges and preamble into the record.

He and Judge Nkosinathi Chili both urged the accused to “listen carefully” to the charges, with Chili encouraging the men to be “willing participants” in trial proceedings. All the accused entered pleas of not guilty.

The star of the show is sure to be Mdweshu, who was allegedly the leader of the “Hlophe gang”, along with since-deceased Bonga Hlophe.

Hlophe’s gang and the “Mthembu gang” — headed by since-murdered William Mthembu — are accused of controlling several specific blocks at the sprawling hostel complex and, while vying for the spoils collected from residents through extortion, killing one another and hostel dwellers.

Mdweshu is facing one charge of racketeering and one of extortion.

He also faces murder and attempted murder charges, with Khayelihle Mbuthuma, Vukani Mcobothi, Eugene Wonderboy Hlophe, Ntshangase, Mbuyiselwa Mkhize, Mondli Mthethwa and Bongani Mbhele.

Mbuthuma, Mthethwa and Mbhele have all already been individually convicted and sentenced for previous crimes that occurred outside the time frame of the Glebelands Eight crimes.

Mbuthuma is serving a life sentence for murder, Mthethwa is serving five years for culpable homicide and Mbhele is serving 10 years for attempted murder.

The three were individually shackled at the end of each day’s appearance and marched to the holding cells.

Despite this, there has been an air of nonchalance around the week’s proceedings. Tea and lunch breaks have not been shortened or skipped to expedite matters, and the accused were seen chatting in the dock before and after Judge Chili left the courtroom.

They also gestured to family and friends in the public gallery as heavily armed police and prison security stood by. An armed correctional services officer appeared to be napping before proceedings ended on Thursday.

Five witnesses were called over Wednesday and Thursday — all employed as SAPS forensic field workers at the time of the crimes — as Paver “set the scene” for testimony in the coming weeks.

It was the evidence — or lack thereof — of colonel Mthokozisi Sishi on Wednesday that elicited a strong reaction from Krog, who implied that the then local criminal records centre (LCRC) employee was either incompetent or compromised.

Sishi processed the 2014 Glebelands Block R crime scene — described by some observers at the time as a “war zone”.

It was at this scene that Mdweshu, the since-deceased Hlophe, and several of the other accused tried to kill William Mthembu and members of his gang, in what has been alleged was a revenge attack for the death of a “Hlophe gang” member.

It was also at this scene that Mdweshu was allegedly injured and his blood found on a plastic Sunfoil oil bottle. Four of the attempted murder charges faced by Mdweshu and several of the other accusations stem from the incident.

The same “war zone” incident was referred to in an affidavit by lead investigator Bhekumuzi Sikhakhane when he testified in 2018 as to why bail should be denied for Mdweshu and company.

Displaying dramatic flair on Wednesday, Krog ripped into Sishi’s evidence, asking why he only swabbed the Sunfoil bottle for blood and paid no attention to another area that had “visible” bloodstains.

He had been working on the instructions of the investigating officer, replied Sishi.

That officer was one sergeant Cebekhulu from the Umlazi police station.

Krog further asked Sishi:

• Why comprehensive measurements were lacking in his album (oversight);

• Why shell casings were missing (they were removed by local police);

• Why the blood-smeared bottle was not photographed showing its location at the scene as it had no context (agreed); and

• If he was aware that DNA analysis was only conducted on the swab in 2018 (he wasn’t — the laboratory work is not his purview).

Krog also grilled Sishi on his missing notes, which Sishi said had been filed in a docket that could not be traced since he last appeared in court.

The testimony of another forensics officer on Thursday revealed that Umlazi’s sergeant Cebekhulu was also the investigating officer at the assassination of Ndovela at the Umlazi Magistrate’s court.

Umlazi police station and some of its so-called “rogue cops” who allegedly work with political factions and gangs have long been a thorn in the side for some Glebelands residents, activist Vanessa Burger and KZN Violence Monitor’s Mary de Haas.

Testimony to this effect was heard at the Moerane Commission, where De Haas said, “corruption at the Umlazi police station is fairly well known”.

Burger and de Haas have also sent numerous letters to SAPS regarding the Umlazi station and its alleged rogue cops.

And, in the same affidavit presented at the bail hearings spoken of earlier, lead investigator Sikhakhane said all of the Glebelands cases were handed to his team as they had not been “satisfactorily investigated” by Umlazi SAPS.

“[W]e had to overcome a lack of trust on the part of witnesses on account of the conduct of those officers previously seized with the investigation of these matters,” said Sikhakhane.

During the same bail hearings, Mbuthuma — before being convicted and sentenced for another Glebelands killing — said police had “not been even-handed in their investigations and seek only to satisfy their own agenda”.

“Police are simply succumbing to pressure from an opposing faction,” he said.

There will be no proceedings on Friday. The trial continues on Monday 2 September at the Pietermaritzburg High Court. DM