Africa-Press – South-Africa. The man alleged to have assassinated Cape Town lawyer Pete Mihalik says he had an alibi all along to prove that he was not the shooter, but did not know that he could let this person vouch for him.
During his trial in the Western Cape High Court, he said it was only when he was on trial that he realised that this might have had him released from the case right at the start and given him back his freedom.
Sizwe Biyela testified under cross-examination by the State on Wednesday that on 30 October 2018, the morning of Mihalik’s assassination, he and his co-accused Nkosinathi Khumalo and Vuyile Maliti were sitting in a VW Polo with a fourth man and they were negotiating the sale of Kruger Rands.
He said his girlfriend was waiting at a nearby garage for them to conclude their business.
From KwaZulu-Natal’s Umlazi, he only remembers it being near the garage where she was waiting, and a Spar.
After the negotiations, he and his girlfriend caught a metered taxi to Langa to get her hair done.
The court has already heard that his phone was tracked to the Langa Shoprite and that he bought himself a bus ticket back to Durban.
After the murder of Mihalik, police combed the area to get witness statements on possible vehicle sightings and examined CCTV along the road.
Meanwhile, the three ended up being pulled over by a traffic officer for skipping a stop street. The car Khumalo was in drove off, but he walked back to say that the driver had just fled the scene.
So, because the traffic officer was only half-way through fining him, he took him to the Sea Point police station to finish writing out the ticket and possibly even find the car that drove away.
Before he knew it, Khumalo was quickly connected to the hit, based on CCTV footage of the vehicles and the registration numbers of the cars at the scene and the cars pulled over at the traffic stop.
All three deny having anything to do with the murder, and the attempted murder of Mihalik’s young children.
At Sea Point police station, Khumalo’s phone was ringing incessantly, and a police officer whipped it out of his shirt, so the police had their second breakthrough. They were able to trace the person calling urgently, which was Biyela, and obtained a picture of him.
Biyela was arrested at the Bellville bus station as he was about to take the bus back to Durban.
However, he says that when he was arrested, his cellphone was taken from him by police, and he had no way of getting hold of his girlfriend or family. He did not know her cellphone number off by heart either.
He was pressed at length on Wednesday to explain why he never told anyone that he had an alibi – his girlfriend – who could vouch for him not being at the murder of Mihalik.
Maliti was ultimately contacted through the address he gave when he was ticketed by the traffic officer. He was not found at that address, his parent’s home, but presented himself to the police when he heard he was wanted for questioning.
Biyela testified he had arrived in Cape Town on an Intercape bus on 28 October and spent the night with his girlfriend, Akhona Matiwane, in a white-painted house with cement walls near the Litha Park police station in Khayelitsha. Biyela had dropped him there after he arrived. He was not sure if he would be able to find the house again.
He and his girlfriend had a long-distance relationship for about a year, but he did not know where she worked.
He has insisted he was in Cape Town only to conduct a Kruger Rand transaction.
He and his cousin, Khumalo, operated the Durban arm of the Kruger Rand trading business, and they sold coins to Maliti in Cape Town, he testified.
Biyela said he did not even know who Mihalik was.
Prosecutor Greg Wolmarans insisted that if that was the case, his reason for withholding a crucial alibi made no sense.
“You know she’s important to show how you guys are innocent!” exclaimed Wolmarans.
Biyela replied: “It was my first time being arrested, My Lady, so I did not know that in the long run she will be needed to come and testify.”
The trial continues.
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