The Waterkloof four victim may have received medical attention

ALSO: Waterkloof 4 wrongfully imprisoned (Click here)

I recently came into possession of a rather interesting document regarding the Waterkloof four case. Because of all the personal opinions and possible ulterior motives of certain people involved, I decided to focus purely on the court proceedings and the facts and arguments entered into the record when I initially investigated this travesty. As detailed in my report the court records were more than enough to show that there is no legal or intellectual way to convict the four youngsters of any of the charges brought against them.

However, if you care to delve into the story that transpired before the court drama the ridiculous nature of this case quickly becomes apparent. Even though the defence team were convinced that the State had the wrong body, nothing worth mentioning was ever done to actually investigate the matter. When the NPA was given the instruction to prosecute based on the stories told by the von Lansberg brothers, a search was done for a body in the area and time frame of the attack. When a body was found, all investigations stopped and the case was brought to court even though the injuries on the body did not match the description of the assault. Nobody cared to check hospital admissions or if they did it was not deemed helpful in destroying the four youngsters involved.

The closest state hospital to where the incident took place was Mamelodi Hospital and would have been well within reach of the park. The document in this article is a copy of the admission sheet for the morning after the assault took place and shows at least three possible candidates. One person in particular stood out and on further investigation it seems as if the person gave the wrong address. The individual currently living at the specified address claims to have done so for a long time and apparently does not know the name at all. The name of the person in question is Peter Maseko and if anybody knows a person by that name that was assaulted during the end of November or early in December 2001, I would really like to speak to him regarding his injuries.

 

Mamelodi Hospital admission sheet

This might be nothing and there are other avenues that we are looking at, but the point is that the court did not remove all other reasonable possibilities and somehow the seemingly obvious areas were not investigated properly. Why would this be? People keep telling me (off the record of course) that this is a very sensitive case without offering any qualification for such a statement. Could it be sensitive because, once again, it was a monumental screw-up from the investigation right through to the trial and sentencing. That is becoming such a cliché that it is almost understandable that the people of South Africa can not see the problem with this case.

Maybe there is some truth in a few of the conspiracy theories floating around about this case and the conviction really was massaged into place for what ever reason. Well, massage might be too soft a word given that the logic, or more accurately the lack thereof, demonstrated by Magistrate Kotze was quite brutal and thoroughly suspect at times. The judgement by Seriti and Ebersohn in support of Kotze was nothing short of criminally stupid and I still can not believe that a legal professional can get away with such nonsense.

Anyway, the fact remains that the courts and/or investigators did not remove all reasonable possibilities and they definitively ignored serious contradicting evidence. So, if the unfortunate individual that was beaten up on that fateful night did not die from some other unrelated cause, he is still out there and we are looking for him…

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