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Murderers tried to fake suicide
23/08/2007 19:06 - (SA)
Pretoria - A farmer had been strung from his neck on a tree to make it look like a suicide, one of the men accused of the farmer's murder told the Pretoria High Court on Thursday.
Richard Khoza, 21, testified in a clinical, detached manner, how he and his brother-in-law, Wilson Manganye, 36, had in February last year put a noose around Ludwig Wambach's neck and tied it to a tree after an argument about illegal wood chopping on Wambach's smallholding near Hammanskraal.
Khoza and Manganye both denied guilt to a charge of murdering Wambach. Manganye claimed they had not foreseen Wambach's death when they tied him to a tree.
However, Khoza made the startling admission on Thursday that they had deliberately left Wambach hanging from a tree so that people would think he had hanged himself.
'He snatched the sjambok'
He also claimed he had arranged with Wambach a day before the incident that he could chop wood on the farm, but claimed Wambach had suddenly accused him of being a thief, who had for several months stolen wood.
"I told him I was not on the farm before as I was in prison, but he disputed it saying I used to come steal wood.
"We started arguing . He snatched the sjambok I had and started hitting me. I caught the other side and broke the sjambok," he said.
According to Khoza, Wambach also started hitting him, at which stage Manganye came to his rescue and started trading punches with Wambach. The two of them also throttled each other until Wambach passed out.
"The white man was lying on the ground and could not stand up. Manganye called me and said I must come and help him pick up the man.
'Wambach had tried to run away'
"Manganye made a knot in the rope and slipped it over the man's head. He said I must lift up the man while he was tying the other end of the rope around the tree, hanging the man. Then we went home," Khoza testified.
Confronted with medical evidence that Wambach had still been alive when he was strung up, Khoza said he did not know the difference between a dead man and one who had fainted, but insisted that Wambach was unconscious at the time.
In an earlier statement, he however said Wambach had tried to run away, which was when Manganye put the rope around his neck.
Wambach's niece, Madeleen Bredenhann, a few years ago received two life sentences for axing to death her mother, Elmarie Bredenhann and grandmother, Albertina Wambach.
During the trial, Bredenhann shifted the blame to Wambach and his son, Dieter, but the Judge who sentenced her to life imprisonment said she had cooked up this version to get out of trouble.
The trial continues.
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