Alleged drunk driver on murder charges
If convicted, could be first case in SA history
THE COURTS are taking a tough stance on drivers involved in fatal car crashes. An allegedly drunk motorist is set to go on trial for murder following the deaths of four children after the car he was driving plunged into them.
The National Prosecuting Authority is hoping for a conviction on the four counts that Lazarus Malatjie is facing. He also faces charges of reckless and negligent driving and drunk driving.
Malatjie made a brief appearance in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court yesterday. His trial was postponed to September.
He had been charged with culpable homicide, but when the blood results came back in March, showing that his blood-alcohol level was 0.30g, the NPA altered the charges.
The legal blood alcohol limit is 0.05g per 100ml, meaning Malatjie was six times over the legal limit.
He was arrested after he allegedly rammed into a group of students who were changing a tyre in the emergency lane along the Nasrec Road offramp.
Lebogang Tsotetsi, Ndiphiwe Oliphant, Kenneth Xaba and Sandile Tshabalala died. Sakhile Tshabalala survived.
The youths, from Mofolo South, Soweto, were tertiary students and some were due to graduate a few weeks before the car ploughed into them.
Sarah Oliphant said Ndiphiwe was her only child.
“I still cry myself to sleep. Our lives will never be the same. What hurts me the most is that he (Malatjie) has not shown any remorse. Why has it been so difficult for him to reach out to us?
“All he could have done was to come and talk to us. We were not going to do anything to him. He does not seem remorseful. They can lock him up for many years but when he does not have remorse, he does not,” Oliphant said.
Thoko Tshabalala, Sandile’s mother, said she was leaving everything in the hands of God.
“Sending him to jail will not bring back our children. Nothing will bring back our children. God will take control of the situation.
“The pain we are feeling is immense,” Tshabalala said.
This is not the first case in which a motorist was charged with murder.
However, if Malatjie is convicted and sentenced for murder and does not appeal, he would be the first in South African history.
In March 2013, the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned the murder convictions arising from the deaths of 10 children being transported in Jacob Humphreys’ taxi at a level crossing in Eerste River in the Western Cape in August 2010.
The court replaced the 10 counts of murder with culpable homicide and reduced his sentence from 20 years to eight.
Hip-hop artist Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye and Themba Tshabalala’s murder convictions were also overturned in October 2014.
The South Gauteng High Court ruled that Maarohanye and Tshabalala were guilty of culpable homicide instead of murder for killing four schoolchildren during a drag-racing accident.
They were initially handed 20 years for murder, but the court reduced these to 10, two of which were suspended.
Maarohanye and Tshabalala were released on parole in January 2017.