Five in court for tavern shooting

FIVE people arrested in connection with the July mass shooting at Mdlalose Tavern in Nomzamo Park, in Orlando East, Soweto, appeared briefly in court yesterday.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said yesterday that more suspects would be brought to justice.

Phindi Mjonondwane, NPA Gauteng spokesperson, said the five tavern shooting suspects were linked to other crimes.

“They appeared for the 16 murders that happened at Nomzamo tavern and three other murder cases emanate from other dockets that were combined with the Nomzamo one,” Mjonondwane told media outside the Orlando Magistrate’s Court.

“We have about four cases from Orlando SAPS and two from Kliptown SAPS which are all then combined into one docket to formulate the charges, which is 19 charges of murder, multiple counts of attempted murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and defeating the ends of justice.”

She said two of the accused were South African and the other three were from Lesotho.

“Investigations are progressing very well and at this stage we do suspect that it is a syndicate that wanted to control abandoned mines, dumping sites and the cable theft syndicate,” said Mjonondwane.

The matter was postponed to October 18.

In July, Police Minister Bheki Cele said crime scene experts had recovered at least 130 used bullet casings of AK-47 assault rifles after the Soweto tavern shooting.

“There were about 130 empty cartridges of AK-47, which means that those people that were there really meant business. In an AK-47, at any given time, you put 30 bullets in it, which means time and again, they would reload. There is suspicion that there were about three of those rifles among those five people that were identified there (assailants),” Cele said at the time.