Two looters sentenced to five years’ in prison

TWO July 2021 unrest looters have been convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment for public violence.

Police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker said that on July 11, 2021, at 8.45pm, Greenwood Park police responded to reports of a service station being looted at Inanda Road in Durban by a large mob. The group pelted police officers with rocks, damaging the police vehicle in the process. The two police officers stood their ground and arrested two men as the crowd began to flee the scene.

“The two suspects, Sihle Jali, 41, and Sifiso Ngcobo, 29, were detained at Greenwood Park SAPS on charges of public violence. They subsequently made several appearances at the Durban Magistrate’s Court and on Friday, August 5, 2022, they were convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment for public violence,” Naicker said.

Kwazulu-natal Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant-general Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has welcomed the convictions.

“This sentence sends a clear message that while the wheels of justice may sometimes turn slowly, criminals cannot escape their day of reckoning,” Mkhwanazi said.

The trial of the alleged instigator in the Brookside Mall fire in Pietermaritzburg during the civil unrest was expected to begin on August 4, but had to be postponed because the defence requested more time. The trial of Ndumiseni Khetha Zuma, 35, was set to begin in the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court today. It was originally scheduled for August 4 and 5 in Regional Court 2.

In recent months, a number of accused have been found guilty and sentenced for July unrest-related crimes.

In June, Nhlanhla Samkelo Mthembu, 31, was sentenced by the Durban Regional Court to five years direct imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to the theft of a motor vehicle belonging to a business in Mobeni, south of Durban.

During the unrest, the complainant’s business property was looted and several of his business vehicles were taken, one of them being a Toyota Hino truck, valued at about R350000.

Also in June, Lungelo Nthenga, 24, was jailed to five years after he pleaded guilty to three counts of theft pertaining to the looting in July 2021 in the Mobeni industrial area. In his plea, Nthenga said that he was a taxi driver, and during the unrest, he used his vehicle to transport people to the Mobeni business industrial area on South Coast Road so they could loot. His vehicle was stopped at a roadblock and found loaded with tinned fish, rice, as well as items from the surrounding looted warehouses.

In March, the same court sentenced Mvelo Majola to six years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to the theft of a motor vehicle during the looting and civil unrest in KZN last year.