{"id":248730,"date":"2023-01-31T16:12:11","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T14:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/murdered-lesbians-family-say-justice-system-failed-them\/"},"modified":"2023-01-31T16:12:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T14:12:11","slug":"murdered-khayelitsha-womans-family-say-justice-system-failed-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/murdered-khayelitsha-womans-family-say-justice-system-failed-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Murdered Khayelitsha woman\u2019s family say justice system failed them"},"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 src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/murdered-khayelitsha-womans-family-say-justice-system-failed-them.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Members of Free Gender protested at Khayelitsha Remembrance Square outside the magistrate\u2019s court in September. Archive photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The man accused of fatally stabbing Phelokazi Mqathanya has been found not guilty by the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court.<\/li>\n<li>The Magistrate found that the State did not present sufficient evidence to convict the accused of the murder.<\/li>\n<li>Mqathanya was lesbian and her family believe her murder was a hate crime.<\/li>\n<li>This news came as a shock to her family and activists who for months had been fighting for justice after her murder.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The man accused of fatally stabbing a Khayelitsha woman has been found not guilty by the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court. This news came as a shock to her family and activists who for months had been fighting for justice for Phelokazi Mqathanya\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n<p>Mqathanya, who lived in Site C in Khayelitsha, was stabbed to death on 2 May 2021. She was lesbian and her relatives and 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\/2023\/01\/murdered-khayelitsha-womans-family-say-justice-system-failed-them.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The accused, Bongani Ngadleka, was arrested soon after the murder. But after several delays in the investigations 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 roll<\/a> on 14 December 2021. The case was brought back to court on 5 May 2022 following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/free--demand-better-management-cases-involving-gay-community-khayelitsha\/\">action<\/a> by activists at Free Gender.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2022, the case was again postponed because the prosecutors were not in court and the matter was remanded for trial in January 2023 at a hearing later that month. The trial was expected to start on 18 January, but the accused was not at court due to \u201ctransport issues\u201d at Pollsmoor Prison. This happened again on 19 January. This case has been postponed 15 times since May 2022.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday 27 January, Ngadleka was found not guilty on the charge of murder. The magistrate found the case had failed to present sufficient evicence.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday 26 January, state witness Abongile Ngalo told the court that the night Mqathanya was stabbed, he and his friends were drinking at his house when she joined them with three other girls. \u201cPhelokazi was my friend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Ngalo said that the accused had arrived about 20 minutes after Mqathanya and her friends, who had been sitting in the kitchen area of the house.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBongani wasn\u2019t a friend, but I knew him from [the community]. He started dancing but we never paid much attention to him. At one point I saw him going to the kitchen but from where I was sitting, I didn\u2019t see if he had spoken to Phelokazi and her friends. While he was in the kitchen I didn\u2019t hear any commotion or arguments. After about 10 minutes I saw him leave the house,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Ngalo said Mqathanya had gone outside, apparently to get a lighter for her cigarettes. About 20 minutes later he went out to buy more alcohol and that\u2019s when he saw her lifeless body lying outside on the corner of his home.<\/p>\n<p>Ngalo testified that he did not see Ngadleka or anyone else at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>Ngadleka\u2019s legal aid lawyer argued that the State\u2019s witness did not place his client at the crime scene nor did he see any communication happen between his client and the deceased.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer said it was \u201cunfortunate\u201d and \u201cunfair\u201d for Ngadleka to be behind bars when there was no evidence proving that he had committed the crime.<\/p>\n<p>It was revealed in court that the state was meant to call a second witness to testify, but had not been able to find her. \u201cThe investigating officer has on numerous occasions visited the second witness\u2019s home but she was not there. The investigating officer was later told by the witness\u2019s mother that she is working on a farm in Malmesbury but her mother didn\u2019t know which farm,\u201d the prosecutor told the court. It was alleged that this was the witness who had seen the accused leaving the crime scene.<\/p>\n<p>The magistrate ruled that the State had failed to produce tangible evidence that Ngadleka had killed Mqathanya. \u201cThere is absolutely no evidence linking the accused to the offence,\u201d said the magistrate.<\/p>\n<p>After the verdict, Free Gender\u2019s Funeka Soldaat said, \u201cThis case was handled badly from the beginning which is why we are in this situation. Even at the last minute, we were the ones who had to go look for witnesses for this case. It is a very painful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Phumeza Ndlwana, Mqathanya\u2019s sister, said, \u201cAs a family we are not at peace. But then again that\u2019s how the South African justice system is. We will never be at peace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI blame the police because they handled this case badly from the start. For instance, when we went to identify my sister\u2019s body, we were given her bloody clothes in a plastic bag and told to take them to the investigating officer at the police station. Weren\u2019t they meant to retrieve the clothes as evidence?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe went to the police station numerous times before going to the Eastern Cape for Phelokazi\u2019s funeral and each time we\u2019d go we would be told that the investigating officer is not there,\u201d said Ndlwana.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 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\/2023\/01\/murdered-khayelitsha-womans-family-say-justice-system-failed-them.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of Free Gender protested at Khayelitsha Remembrance Square outside the magistrate\u2019s court in September. Archive photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana The man accused of fatally stabbing Phelokazi Mqathanya has been found not guilty by the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court. The Magistrate found that the State did not present sufficient evidence to convict the accused of the murder. 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