{"id":236187,"date":"2022-09-05T16:26:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T14:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/protesters-denounce-ninth-postponement-in-case-murdered-woman\/"},"modified":"2022-09-05T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T14:26:57","slug":"protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters slam ninth postponement in murder case"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mary-Anne%20Gontsana\/protestkhayelitshamagistratescourt-mg-20220905.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of protest at Khayelitsha Remembrance Square\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Members of Free Gender protest at Khayelitsha Remembrance Square outside the magistrate\u2019s court. Photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Phelokazi Mqathanya was murdered in May 2021. Bongani Ngadleka is on trial for her murder.<\/li>\n<li>The case was removed from the court roll, then reintroduced in May 2022. Since then it has been postponed nine times.<\/li>\n<li>Activists suspect Mqathanya was murdered because she was lesbian.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>About 30 people sang and danced outside the Khayelitsha Magistrate\u2019s Court on Monday, protesting against the constant postponements of the case of Phelokazi Mqathanya. She was murdered last year.<\/p>\n<p>The case has now been postponed for the ninth time since May.<\/p>\n<p>Mqathanya was stabbed to death on 2 May 2021. Mqathanya, who lived in Site C, was lesbian and her family and LGBT+ activists believe her murder was a hate crime.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The accused, Bongani Ngadleka, was arrested soon after the murder but after several delays and four court postponements, the case was<a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/khayelitsha-police-failing-lgbtiq-community-says-activists\/\"> removed from the court\u2019s roll<\/a> on 14 December. The case was brought back to court on 5 May this year following<a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/free--demand-better-management-cases-involving-gay-community-khayelitsha\/\"> action<\/a> by Free Gender, a lesbian rights organisation.<\/p>\n<p>Wearing brown sunglasses, a white shirt, grey pants and a grey blazer, Ngadleka stood in the dock for less than five minutes before the magistrate announced that his case was being postponed again.<\/p>\n<p>The reason for the postponement this time was to allow the prosecutor to determine whether the case should proceed following representations made by Ngadleka\u2019s legal aid lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>While the proceedings were going on inside court, outside people held placards saying \u201cJustice 4 Phelokazi\u201d, \u201cEnough is enough\u201d and \u201cPhantsi ngokubulala abantwana bethu kwanele\u201d (Down with the killing of our children, it\u2019s enough).<\/p>\n<p>Free Gender\u2019s Funeka Soldaat, who took part in the picket, sighed when asked what she thought of another postponement. \u201cThis case strongly reminds me of Zoliswa Nkonyana\u2019s case. It took six years for justice to be served. We did the same thing when her case \u2026 went through many postponements, and eventually the accused were sentenced to 18 years,\u201d said Soldaat.<\/p>\n<p>Nkonyana was 19 years old when she was raped and murdered in 2006, just a few metres outside her house in Khayelitsha, for being lesbian. Her case took years of processing through Khayelitsha\u2019s criminal justice system before a verdict was reached.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe difference between Zoliswa\u2019s case and Phelokazi\u2019s one, is that with this one we are not fully aware of what is going on. If this case was handled properly by the investigating officer from the start, we would not be in this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe investigating officer messed up and the state needs to take accountability,\u201d said Soldaat.<\/p>\n<p>Looking disappointed, Mqathanya\u2019s sister, Phumeza Ndlwana, said, \u201cI am fed up with this case. This is abuse to us. And everything that is happening just feels like a delaying tactic \u2026 I know that Bongani will go free, just wait and see,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The case was postponed to 6 October.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of Free Gender protest at Khayelitsha Remembrance Square outside the magistrate\u2019s court. Photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana Phelokazi Mqathanya was murdered in May 2021. Bongani Ngadleka is on trial for her murder. The case was removed from the court roll, then reintroduced in May 2022. Since then it has been postponed nine times. Activists suspect Mqathanya [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-236187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/protesters-slam-ninth-postponement-in-murder-case.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}