VUYO MKIZE
S O JUST whose number did Palesa Khashane call 12 times the night before and the day after her husband was murdered in 2009?
This was the question posed to her during extensive cross-examination by Johannesburg High Court Judge Kathleen Satchwell yesterday.
The court was sitting at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court.
The widow of former Bona magazine editor and Soweto TV board chairman Force Khashane appeared in the dock with her head bowed, her shoulders slouched and her voice barely audible as she testified in the trial of four men accused of his murder.
Cellphone records previously presented to court showed that Palesa’s cellphone number had made calls to accused number four Sibusiso Mtshali’s cellphone on August 11, 2009, the day before her husband was murdered and just five minutes before he was gunned down.
Yet yesterday, Palesa said the number reflected on the records was not Mtshali’s, but probably that of a client or one of her employees. She said she usually called Mtshali on a Cell C number, not the Vodacom number reflected on the records. But Mtshali had told investigating officer Warrant Officer Thomas Maluleke that the Vodacom number called from Palesa’s phone was the one reflected on the records.
In her evidence-in-chief, Palesa told the court that on the night of August 12, 2009, she had gone to her bedroom to sleep while her husband was working on his autobiography in the dining room at their Orlando East home.
“I was woken up by the sound of shooting, and walked to where my husband had been sitting in the dining room. He wasn’t there. I went to the kitchen because the lights were still on, and I saw that the kitchen door was open. I went outside and found the deceased lying on the ground next to the garage. I screamed for the neighbour. She came. The children also woke up and I told (her son) Khashane Khashane to call his uncle Solomon.”
She said Solomon, Khashane’s brother, arrived and they took Force to Lesedi Private Clinic. On arrival at the clinic, her husband was rushed to the emergency room. He died soon afterwards.
“We returned home in the early hours of the morning. When I was inside the house I found that my cellphone was not where I left it, and the laptop wasn’t there either.”
Palesa admitted to being friends and business partners with Mtshali, who she claims helped with her computer training company.
She also told the court that she had willingly lent Mtshali the silver Toyota Yaris that Force had bought her two weeks before his murder. Mtshali used the vehicle to drive to KwaZulu-Natal. The Yaris was found in Vosloorus outside Mtshali’s hostel room.
Palesa vehemently denied she was on the phone with Mtshali the day before and after her husband was killed.
“The accused (Mtshali) says he has a particular cell number. Your cellphone calls that number. You say you didn’t phone that number, that you have (and know) another number for the accused. So who are you exactly phoning?” asked Judge Satchwell.
“There are a lot of people I call. When I call accused four (Mtshali), I call his landline or his Cell C number,” she answered.
“This is the difficulty I have. Your phone phones this number before it is stolen and it phones the number after you say it is stolen. Can you explain why your phone would call this number after it is stolen?”
“I cannot explain that. All I know is that at the time the calls were made I didn’t have a phone.”
Judge Satchwell ordered Palesa to spend 15 minutes in the holding cells to go through the documents displaying the cellphone records so that she could explain who the number belonged to. After the adjournment, Palesa still couldn’t give a name for the person who she supposedly called.
Judge Satchwell ordered Palesa to come back to court today with all her diaries, phone books and business contact books from 2009 so that the number she called could be traced.
The trial continues.