‘My father was still breathing’
Son testifies, identifies ‘suspicious-looking man’ in court
“I was the first person to attend to my father,” said Dumisani Molosi, son of slain ANC councillor Victor Molosi during his testimony in the Knysna Circuit High Court on Monday 28 October.
Molosi was gunned down on a Monday night in July last year mere metres from his home in Concordia where he was dropped off after attending a meeting at Concordia High School nearby. The trial against the three men charged with his murder – Vela Parick Dumile, then councillor Velile Waxa and Mawande Makhala – is in its third week and saw the victim's son Dumisani testify. Molosi's wife Nomonde was also to testify this week, but by the time of going to print, she had not taken the stand due to having fallen ill.
'Silence after first shot'
On the witness stand, Dumisani recalled the night of 23 July 2018 when they heard three gunshots go off: “There was silence after the first shot," he said, "then the second one was followed by a man’s cries, ‘yoh yoh!’, and again on the third one it was quiet,”
The teenager said his mother then instructed him and his sibling to lie down but he only did so for a few minutes, before rushing upstairs to see who was shot, and he saw a man running fast.
He said his mother and brother had followed him upstairs, that she called his dad's two phones but both just rang in their home because he had left them there before the meeting. His mother then called councillor Aubrey Tsengwa (who had also attended the school meeting), Dumisane said, and told him about the gunshots and that her husband was still not home.
'He was lying across from our home'
The boy told the court it was his brother who recognised their father through the window: “He was lying across from our home. I rushed downstairs, scared that I might get shot too, opened the door and locked my mother and brother inside and quickly rushed to my father, who was still breathing. Roughly three minutes later, Zamubuntu Blaai and Aubrey Tsengwa arrived ass well as other community members. They took him to hospital.” Blaai was the school's acting principal at the time.
He told the court about a "suspicious man" who had come looking for "the councillor" at their house the previous night 22 July, saying he needed proof of address. Dumisani said
he remembers the man's distinctive high-pitched voice and how he and his mother remarked that it sounded like a woman’s voice.
He said when he told the man his father wasn’t home, the man was reluctant to leave and as he walked away he kept observing their house. “I looked at him until he got to the gravel road so I could have a better view – at the corner he was met by a short, dark man and I continued looking at them because the man said he stays at Endlovini and I’ve never seen him before so I wanted to see where he was going.”
The 19-year-old said the next day, a person knocked on their door and spoke to his mother. “I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I could recognise the voice and heard my mom saying, 'He is not here,' referring to my father.”
'This is the man'
During an ID parade last year, Dumisani had identified Dumile as the person who came knocking at their door on 22 and 23 July, and when he was asked this week if he could identify the man in court, he walked towards the bench, looked the accused dead in the eye and said, "This is the man."
Dumile was fingered in state witness Luzuko Makhale's original statement as the alleged "hitman", but during Luzuko's testimony in court recently, he did not corroborate the allegations in his original statement implicating any of the accused, and was later declared a hostile witness.
Dumile’s lawyer Flip Theron said his client denies he was at the Molosi residence and alleged that Dumisani could identify him only because there were pictures of him circulating on social media after his first court appearance. At the time, Knysna-Plett Herald reported that both the media and members of the public were prohibited from taking photos on the grounds that the state intended to have an ID parade.