‘Sunflower killers’ launch fresh attack on state’s star witness and his evidence

The two Coligny farmers who were in 2018 found guilty of killing local teenager Matlhomola Moshoeu, have launched a fresh attack on the state’s star witness and his evidence against them.

This in a bid to have the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) overturn the convictions as well as the sentences of 23 and 18 years meted out to Pieter Doorewaard and Phillip Schutte, respectively. The SCA this week heard an application to appeal the North West High Court’s findings against the two.

They were represented by Advocate Barry Roux who, in his heads of arguments, picked apart the version put forward by Bonakele Pakisi – who claimed he saw Doorewaard and Schutte assault Moshoeu and throw him from a moving vehicle.

“Pakisi’s evidence was not only materially contradictory and definitely not clear and satisfactory in every material respect but, more importantly, some of his evidence militated against objective facts,” Roux charged, “On the other hand, the evidence of [Doorewaard and Schutte] was probable and, at the very least, in any event reasonably possibly true.”

In their version, they caught Moshoeu stealing sunflowers and en route to the police station, he jumped from the bakkie.

“Although [Pakisi] said in his statements that he had seen [Schutte] throwing the deceased off the back of the bakkie on three occasions, his evidence was to the contrary that he only saw that on one occasion and he assumed that it had happened on the other two occasions,” Roux argued.

He also highlighted contradictions in Pakisi’s evidence around whether or not the bakkie was moving at the time and the number of perpetrators he had said were involved. Roux said the bakkie was in a sunflower field at the time of the incident.

“[Pakasi] could not see what happened. The height of the sunflowers was in excess of two metres”.

On their version, after Moshoeu jumped from the bakkie Doorewaard and Schutte decided the best course of action was to leave him where he was and drive to the police station to report what had happened.

In convicting the men, though, Judge Ronnie Hendricks said it was “strange why they did not take him to the clinic or go to the clinic to arrange an ambulance or treatment, or even take a doctor or a nurse that was on duty at the clinic, to the scene in order to assist”.

Of this, Roux this week reiterated Doorewaard’s evidence in court – that he “did not believe that it was the right thing to transfer the deceased to the clinic, having regard to his condition”.

Roux pleaded with the court to uphold the appeal on all the counts and to set aside the convictions. Judgment was reserved.

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