Lion murder: Picket at court
2005-01-24 10:37
Phalaborwa - Picketers converged on Phalaborwa circuit court on Monday where three men went on trial for allegedly throwing Nelson Chisale to his death in a lions' den.
"We want to see them behind bars. All three of them, because they have done a cruel thing," said Bethuel Rasekgothoma, a member of the African National Congress Youth League in the area.
"We came here to make sure justice is done," he said. "We are going to make sure the accused are not let free. The law must take its course."
Only the skull, broken leg bones and a finger of Chisale, 43, were found in the lions' camp at the Mokwalo white lion project, near Hoedspruit, in a search after neighbours reported him missing in January last year.
Not long afterwards, police arrested his former employer Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, and two former colleagues, Richard "Doctor" Mathebula, 41, and Simon Mathebula, 43.
All three have been provisionally charged with murder.
About 50 picketers gathered on a pavement across from the court carrying banners reading: "Three life sentences plus 100 years for Mark Crossley" and "The law must take its course for inhumanity intentionally caused by the accused".
Protester Novert Mametja said: "I'm here because I'm not happy about what happened about that guy..."
He wanted to know how people could put a man among predators they knew would kill him, and what the government had to say about it.
The men are accused of beating up Chisale when he returned to fetch his personal possessions after being fired by Scott-Crossley - owner of a construction business at the Engedi game farm in Limpopo - then loading him onto a vehicle and throwing him to the lions. Chisale is believed to have been alive at the time.
A fourth man arrested with them, Robert Mnisi, has since turned State witness.
Scott-Crossley has spent most of the past year in the Nelspruit police station's holding cells where he was moved from Nelspruit prison after eight masked men allegedly robbed and assaulted him in a communal cell, amid suggestions that Chissale's murder was racially motivated.
Scott-Crossley is the brother of Tracy Lee Scott-Crossley, one of six schoolgirls who disappeared in 1988 and 1989 shortly before paedophile Gert van Rooyen and his lover Joey Haarhoff committed suicide while on the run from police.
- SAPA