It’s lonely in the dock
HIS outer shell is consistent: perfectly coiffed hair, tailored suits in various shades of charcoal, and a tiny silver aeroplane pinned to his lapel.
But with dark rings under his eyes and a faraway stare, Henri van Breda this week cut a lonely figure in the High Court in Cape Town, where, it appears, he struggles to stay awake.
Since late January 2015, when he emerged from his home on the luxury De Zalze estate in Stellenbosch wearing shorts and socks covered in blood as three of his family members lay dead upstairs with axe wounds to their heads, a communal cry of “guilty” has echoed through the halls of public opinion.
But through it all, there are two loyal fans who showed up at the court this week and who have stood by their conviction that the Henri sitting in the dock for murder is actually Henri the victim who lost his parents and brother in the most gruesome way possible.
The first one is the giver of the tiny silver aeroplane — his girlfriend, Danielle Janse van Rensburg.
She met Van Breda at chef school after the murders and said in an interview with local media that she knew nothing of the killings and simply fell for “the tall, good-looking blue-eyed guy who kept looking at her in class”.
She stands by his innocence, and when the two of them were arrested for dagga possession, she said the drugs were hers, not his.
Van Breda’s other loyal fan is a bus driver from the Strand named Ralph Montjies. Whenever he can, he boards a train to the court to support Van Breda.
This week, he said: “I told him not to be worried about the fact that the public has already found him guilty. I told him I will start a prayer group for him.
“He was very calm and just told me: ‘Ja, my friend, thank you very much. I appreciate it.’ ”
What also became clear this week is that it’s not just Van Breda in the dock.
Also “on trial” is the iron-clad bubble of safe living you’re guaranteed when you buy into a gated community.
This was the lifestyle choice Martin van Breda made for his family when he paid a fortune for the home at 12 Goske Street.
Soon after the murders, the Van Bredas’ close family friend Alex Boshoff had told the Sunday Times: “Martin was always cautious, very careful. He owned a security company. He was fearful of crime, ironically.”
This week the court heard endless technical details of the security systems at the estate.
From the state’s side, De Zalze’s impenetrable boundaries are evidence that no strangers from “outside” made their way in under the dark cloak of night to carry out the heinous crimes.
From the defence’s side, a complex network of alarm systems, security guards and high electric fences are subject to both human and technical error — making it a plausible theory that a maddened axeman in a balaclava and gloves came onto the estate and helped himself to the human life at 12 Goske Street.
First, a clean-shaven and softspoken Lorenzo Afrika stepped into the witness stand, looking like he’d been dressed from the same catalogue as the young man in the dock.
As a security guard for Thorburn Security Solutions at the time of the murders, he described how he had “checked the perimeter five times that night but found no breach that would give an intruder access to the estate”.
He also said: “Our fence is very accurate so if anything at all touches it, the system shows red. Even if it is only a frog, the system will only return to normal once I have removed the object.”
He told the court: “There was nobody walking through the estate on that specific evening.”
According to Piet Botha on Van Breda’s defence team, the luxury estate has had security problems in the past.
He said: “The Stellenbosch detectives unit has provided me with stats on 190 incidents at the De Zalze estate since December 2002. This includes 24 house break-ins.”
His colleague Matthys Combrink suggested that two men could scale the fence by climbing on each other’s shoulders.
But state witness Edgar Wyngaard, a security shift manager who was on duty on the night of the murders, could not help but smile at the suggestion.
“They won’t be able to get out because they check everyone who comes in through the front gate‚ and they can’t come over the fence because it is too high and they would get shocked,” he said.
The case continues this week.
I told him I will start a prayer group for him They can’t come over the fence because it is too high