Crime 'vicious and not necessary', says judge
2002-05-02 12:44
Pretoria - Two Pietersburg rugby players were sentenced to 18 years in jail
on Thursday for murdering Northern Province teenager Tshepo Matloha
in March last year.
Pretoria High Court Judge Bernard Ngoepe recommended that Riaan
Botha and Ben Korff serve at least two-thirds of their sentences
before being considered for parole.
Botha, along with another rugby team mate Kobus Joubert, also
received a four-year sentence for attempting to defeat the ends of
justice by throwing Matloha's body into a dam.
Botha's two jail terms are to run concurrently.
Joubert's sentence could be altered to correctional supervision
after serving an unspecified minimum period in prison.
Passing sentence, Ngoepe said the State failed to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that racism had been a factor in the murder.
However, he described the crime as "vicious and not necessary",
pointing out that Matloha was defenceless.
"More contemptuous and insensitive to a human being can one
hardly ever be," the judge said.
This insensitivity extended to the dumping of Matloha's body
into the dam. "No respect to the corpse or the deceased was shown,
whether alive or dead," Ngoepe said.
Matloha was apprehended by Botha on his mother's game farm near
Dendron on March 25 last year, where Matloha and two friends,
cousins Alex and Melford Motlokwana, were poaching.
The judge found that Botha, then the captain of the Noordelikes
rugby club's first team, had trampled on Matloha's head, and that
Korff had jumped onto the boy's chest.
- SAPA