Man gets 9 years for aggravated robbery

A RESIDENT of Barkely Farm near Queenstown was jailed for nine years this week for robbery with aggravating circumstances when two robbery victims died after being locked in a freezer.

Olwethu Leli Magalakanqa pleaded guilty to the lesser charge after also facing two counts of murder. The state accepted his plea that he and four co-accused had robbed foreign shopkeepers Ali Ahmed and Kesten Tambu but that his co-accused had forced their victims into the fridge, where they succumbed to asphyxia and burns.

Magalakanqa was armed with a knife at the time but in his explanation of plea he said he and his co-accused had not planned to kill the two men.

Two of his co-accused are due to be sentenced in a separate trial next week while the trial of a further two has yet to be scheduled for hearing.

Sitting in the Bhisho Circuit Court in Queenstown, Judge Belinda Hartle said Magalakanqa had been convicted of an extremely serious crime. He had contributed to the grisly and undignified deaths of the two shopkeepers, who ought to have been free to go about their legitimate business of running a shop.

Highlighting the circumstances of foreigners, especially refugees, in local communities, Hartle said the “special vulnerability” of refugees had been raised by the Constitutional Court. The fact that people were refugees was usually due to events over which they had no control.

“Invariably they are in flight from a serious threat of human rights abuse. For this reason, we should receive them with tolerance, we should accord them hospitality and show them compassion. We should allow them to get on with their lives and trade in order to make a living. Yet, consistently, we read and hear of the grave inhumanity of South Africans towards fellow Africans.”

In sentencing him, Hartle said she had taken into account Magalakanqa’s youth, his mother’s evidence on his behalf, and the possibility that he could be rehabilitated in jail. — DDR