Africa-Press – South-Africa. In 2015, a group of robbers terrorised cellphone shops in Cape Town and Malmesbury when they stormed in at gunpoint to clean the places out.
On 5 February, it was the Vodacom at the Gardens Centre shopping complex.
On 18 February, they hit the Telkom in Malmesbury and a Cell C store in Brackenfell.
They graduated to an ATM bombing opposite a Spar in Bellville on 4 March, sending shopping baskets and debris flying in the mall.
Now, with only four of the original six accused left, the initial investigating officer Charl Kinnear assassinated, and a new magistrate, they might finally enter into a plea deal to get it over and done with.
According to the docket, the men have roots stretching from Khayelitsha and Bellville in Cape Town, to Observatory and Bellevue in Johannesburg.
One is still on the lam, and another died in March this year of natural causes.
The accused are Vusi Mafu, Musa Mthembu, Kwanele Mayo, Xolisani Nenemba, Mthunzi Ncube, and Stanley Masuku.
Ncube died in March, with his death certificate listing “natural causes”, and Nenemba absconded.
Four of the men appeared in the Bellville Regional Court on Friday.
Prosecutor Mervyn Menigo said the case would be separated into three separate plea agreements.
The court heard that there was a new magistrate after the previous one recused themself.
In addition, the State had to bring in analysts to confirm aspects of the evidence that Kinnear would have presented in testimony, had he not been murdered on 18 September 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic also slowed the case down.
One of the incidents they are accused of occurred on 4 March 2015, when an ATM at the Old Oak Centre in Bellville was bombed.
Video footage that appeared online showed a man walking up to the ATM, seemingly carrying out a normal transaction. After some time, the man did something at the bottom of the cash dispenser and suddenly left.
The machine blew open seconds later. Shopping baskets flew, and a roll of paper slowly unravelled. Another man strolling past with a loaf of bread while the man was working, narrowly escaped a brush with death or serious injury.
Another person from a nearby shop emerged to see what was happening, but the man who had been at the ATM earlier returned and started taking something out of the machine. Another man appeared from the Spar, held up a gun and fired as he backed away with the other man.
The indictment includes charges of aggravated robbery, because firearms were used to threaten the people in the shops to get the money out, and to threaten people in the immediate vicinity. In one instance, a car was stolen from a woman at gunpoint.
They also face possession of explosive charges and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
Two of the accused were arrested on the day of the ATM bombing.
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