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[2015] ZAKZPHC 7
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Zondo v S (AR118/14 (Majority Judgment)) [2015] ZAKZPHC 7 (19 February 2015)

SAFLII
Note: This is the majority opinion. View the dissenting opinion
here:
Zondo
v S (AR118/14) [2015] ZAKZPHC 8
IN THE HIGH COURT
OF SOUTH AFRICA
KWAZULU-NATAL
DIVISION, PIETERMARITZBURG
Case No: AR118/14
In the matter
between:
CELIMPHILO WELCOME
ZONDO
...................................................................................
Appellant
and
THE
STATE
......................................................................................................................
Respondent
JUDGMENT
Vahed
J
(Chetty J
concurring):
[1] I have had the
privilege of reading the judgment prepared by my brother Kruger.
Regrettably, I do not agree with his conclusion.
[2] The facts of the
matter are set out in my colleague’s judgment and, subject to
what follows, I will not repeat them here.
[3]
Rape is a vile and despicable deed. It is something no woman ought to
endure and it is particularly horrendous when it is perpetrated
upon
a child, like in this case, who was at the tender age of 10 when it
happened. I too agree with the sentiments expressed by
Nugent JA in S
v Vilakazi
2009
(1) SACR 552
at paragraph 57, and which my brother has referred to in
his judgment. The complainant in this case must indeed have been
traumatised.
Added to the trauma, it is clear from the evidence that
unfolded in the regional court that she lost her virginity during the
incident
in question. One cannot even begin to imagine what impact
these events must have on the complainant as she matures into
adolescence
and later into adulthood. To my mind, it does not redound
to the appellant’s benefit that there was no extraneous
violence
and no physical injury other than the physical injury
occasioned by the rape itself.
[4] Having said
that, however, I agree with Kruger J when he says that the sentence
of life imprisonment imposed by Hurt J was disproportionate
and
inappropriate, marred by misdirection, and one that calls for
interference by this court. This court is consequently at large
and
is entitled to approach the question of sentence afresh. I disagree
that a sentence of 15 years imprisonment is appropriate
in the
circumstances.
[5] On two occasions
during the course of his judgment Kruger J refers to what he regards
as the regional court magistrate’s
finding that the incident in
question had no adverse effect on the complainant’s school
work. I do not agree with that observation.
In my view no such
finding was positively made by the regional magistrate and the
excerpt my brother refers to appears at that
portion of the regional
magistrate’s judgment where he was in the process of recounting
and summarising the complainant’s
evidence. The particular
sentence reads thus:-
“
Had
no previous problems, the incident had no adverse effect on her
school work, the incident took place on a Sunday but she was
unable
to remember when exactly it took place.”
[6] The evidence
itself in this regard is troubling. The complainant, a 10 year old
girl, was testifying through an intermediary
and towards the
conclusion of her evidence the magistrate put a number of questions
to the complainant which commenced with an
observation by the
magistrate that the complainant might be tired. She refuted the
suggestion and the questioning continued. Thereafter
the prosecutor
commenced questioning the complainant and the question put to her
reads thus:-
“
Did
this incident have an adverse effect on your schoolwork?”
She responded in the
negative and then the questions went on to deal with something else.
[7] I have some
misgivings with the testimony itself and whether any significant
reliance can be placed thereon. Quite how a child
of some 10 years of
age could have fully understood and appreciated the import of the
question, through an intermediary, and had
sufficient insight to be
able to respond to it in any appropriate fashion escapes me. In any
event, as I have pointed out, the
magistrate did not make any finding
in that regard but was merely recounting the evidence received by
him. He made no comment in
that regard.
[8]
The sentencing phase of the trial that unfolded before Hurt J in the
court a
quo
was,
as Kruger J pointed out, extremely short. Admittedly, Hurt J’s
judgment on sentence was terse, as my colleague has found,
but that
followed upon an address in mitigation of sentence that was even
shorter.
[9] Before Hurt J,
counsel for the appellant addressed the court as follows:-
“
In
mitigation, the accused is presently twenty-nine years. At the time
of the commission of the offence he was twenty-seven years.
He is a
first offender, unmarried, no children, prior to his arrest he was
doing piece (sic) time jobs from which he earned about
R500 a month.
It appears that the complainant did not suffer any other injuries
than reflected in the J88 which are common in these
types of cases.
And they assault on the victim had no effect on her schoolwork, as
shown on page 61 of the judgment. I would request
the Court to give
him a rehabilitative sentence and then - so that he can reintegrate
into society.”
That address
occupied a mere nine lines of typed transcript.
[10] Against that
backdrop I cannot agree with the submission made by counsel for the
appellant that the appellant’s actions
on the day amounted to a
singular brief lapse of behaviour on his part. There is simply no
evidence to support that submission.
[11] As has been
said repeatedly in this judgment the complainant was a mere 10 years
of age at the time she was raped by the 27
year old appellant. I am
mindful of the fact that the legislature has seen fit to put into a
single category all rapes where the
victim is a girl under the age of
16 years. No graduations are provided for. It seems to me however
that the offence can be regarded
as being more serious where the
victim is younger than 16. The more youthful the victim the more must
the rape be regarded as being
an aggravating feature.
[12]
The youthfulness of the victim was also a factor in
Vilakazi’s
case.
In the court
a quo
in
Vilakazi
there
was a suggestion that the complainant there was 11 years old. In
dealing with that submission on appeal Nugent JA said the
following
(footnotes omitted):-
“
[26]
The complainant was not 11 years old when the offence was committed.
According to the complainant she was 15 when she gave
evidence, which
places her age at between 14 and 16 when the offence was committed.
(In answer to a question the complainant, who
had no formal
schooling, said that she could not remember the date of her birth). A
witness who encountered the complainant for
a short time on the day
the incident occurred said that he ‘estimated her age to be
about 11 or 12 years’ but that
evidence naturally carries no
weight. The district surgeon who examined the complainant on the day
of the incident recorded her
age as 13 years. The source of that
information was not disclosed and nobody bothered to enquire nor to
query its inconsistency
with the evidence of the complainant. The
magistrate estimated her age to be below 16 years and her own
evidence of her age was
accepted by the prosecution and the defence
alike both at the trial and in the proceedings before us. The age of
the complainant
at the time the offence occurred was clearly a
material factor to be taken account of in sentencing. To take account
of the fact
that she was 11 when in fact she was at least 14 and
might have been over 15 was a misdirection.”
[13] That passage
suggests to me that there is indeed a difference in approach to
sentencing when regard is had to the youthfulness
of the victim. To
my mind the fact that the complainant in this case was 10 years old
at the time of the incident is a significantly
aggravating feature.
[14]
In
McLaggan v S
(084/13)
[2013] ZASCA 92
(3 June 2013) the Supreme Court of Appeal said the
following (footnotes omitted):
“
[37]
I come now to the State’s appeal against the sentence. At the
commencement of the trial, the accused was aware that in
the event of
a conviction, the State would seek to invoke
s 51(2)
of the
Criminal
Law Amendment Act 105 of 1997
. The sub-section provides for the
imposition of a minimum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment if
no substantial and compelling
circumstances as envisaged in
subsection 51(3), which would otherwise allow for a deviation of the
prescribed sentence, are found
to exist.
...
[43] It seems that
the court below found that, (a) the accused had the ability to
contribute to society; (b) that he was not an
obvious threat to
society; (c) the rape was not accompanied by additional violence; (d)
there was no threat of violence during
or after the rape and (e) this
kind of conduct was not expected of a person of the character and
background of the accused, taken
cumulatively, constituted mitigation
which would render the imposition of the minimum sentence of 10
years’ imprisonment
an injustice, destructive of his person and
would defeat the overriding interest of society to rehabilitate the
offender back into
society. In light hereof and the fact that the
learned judge in the court below deviated from the prescribed minimum
sentence,
it is obvious that he found substantial and compelling
circumstances to exist. There are two other factors which the learned
judge
in the court below mentioned viz that he was a first offender
and that he had expressed some remorse to his mother in regard to
his
conduct. The court accepted that he took responsibility for the
situation he found himself in. I will assume in his favour
that these
two factors were also considered as mitigating.
[44] Ms Turner for
the State contended that the court below had misdirected itself in
taking into account as mitigating factors
that (a) there was a lack
of additional violence other than that inherently involved in the
rape (b) regarding his character and
his background as a mitigating
factor and (c) the remorse attributed to the accused was not related
to the crime but more self
pity.
[45] On the other
hand Mr Price submitted that the court below had taken everything
into account and that this court should be loathe
to interfere
therewith and punish the accused even more than he has already been.
[46]
The approach to substantial and compelling circumstances was dealt
with in S
v Malgas
2001
(1) SACR 469
(SCA). At para 25 Marais JA, writing for the court set
out what has essentially become a guideline approach to sentences for
listed
offences as follows:
'[25] What stands
out quite clearly is that courts are a good deal freer to depart from
the prescribed sentences than has been supposed
in some of the
preciously decided cases and that it is they who are to judge whether
or not the circumstances of any particular
case are such as to
justify a departure. However, in doing so, they are to respect, and
not merely pay lip service to, the Legislature’s
view that the
prescribed periods of imprisonment are to be taken to be ordinarily
appropriate when crimes of the specified kind
are committed. In
summary-
A.
Section 51
has
limited but eliminated the courts’ discretion in imposing
sentence in respect of offences referred to in
Part I
of Schedule 2
(or imprisonment for other specified periods for offences listed in
other part of Schedule 2).
B.
Courts are required to approach the imposition of sentence conscious
that the Legislature has ordained life imprisonment (or
the
particular prescribed period of imprisonment) as the sentence that
should
ordinarily
and
in the absence of weighty justification be imposed for the listed
crimes in the specified circumstances.
C. Unless there are,
and can be seen to be, truly convincing reasons for a different
response, the crimes in question are therefore
required to elicit a
severe, standardised and consistent response from the courts.
D. The specified
sentences are not to be departed from lightly and for flimsy reasons.
Speculative hypotheses favourable to the
offender, undue sympathy,
aversion to imprisoning first offenders, personal doubts as to the
efficacy of the policy underlying
the legislation, and marginal
differences in personal circumstances or degrees of participation
between co-offenders are to be
excluded.
E. The Legislature
has however deliberately left it to the courts to decide whether the
circumstances of any particular case call
for a departure from the
prescribed sentence. While the emphasis has shifted to the objective
gravity of the type of crime and
the need for effective sanctions
against it, this does not mean that all other considerations are to
be ignored.
F. All factors
(other than those set out in D above) traditionally taken into
account in sentencing (whether or not they diminish
moral guilt) thus
continue to play a role; none is excluded at the outset from
consideration in the sentencing process.
G. The ultimate
impact of all the circumstances relevant to sentencing must be
measured against the composite yardstick ('substantial
and
compelling') and must be such as cumulatively justify a departure
from the standardised response that the Legislature has ordained.
H. In applying the
statutory provisions, it is inappropriately constricting to use the
concepts developed in dealing with appeals
against sentence as the
sole criterion.
I. If the sentencing
court on consideration of the circumstances of the particular case is
satisfied that they render the prescribed
sentence unjust in that it
would be disproportionate to the crime, the criminal and the needs of
society, so that an injustice
would be done by imposing that
sentence, it is entitled to impose a lesser sentence.
J. In so doing,
account must be taken of the fact that crime of that particular kind
has been singled out for severe punishment
and that the sentence to
be imposed in lieu of the prescribed sentence should be assessed
paying due regard to the bench mark which
the Legislature has
provided.’
[47]
It is noteworthy that in
part ‘D
’, it is clearly stated
that specified sentences should not be departed from lightly and for
flimsy reasons. It further sets
out which types of factors should be
excluded from consideration. On the other hand, in part ‘E’,
the approach also
allows for all the factors traditionally considered
in respect of sentence, to be included in the overall consideration
in the
sentencing process. The general approach as set out in
Malgas
found
support and approval in S
v
Fatyi
2001
(1) SACR 485
(SCA) and has been followed since.
[48] In this case,
the lack of evidence that the accused did not have a propensity for
such conduct is of no moment. While the legislature
has essentially
left it for the courts to deal with sentence, is has ordained
prescribed sentences. In particular, it has provided
a sentence for
first offenders and consequently, being a first offender does not
justify taking into account the fact that he may
or may not have a
propensity to commit a crime of this nature. Indeed sentence for
second and subsequent offenders are specifically
provided for in the
subsection. The court below clearly misdirected itself in adopting
this approach in regard to this factor.
It similarly misdirected
itself by concluding that the absence of additional violence
constituted a mitigating factor. The fact
of the matter is that rape
is itself a violent intrusion of the rights of the victim. The lack
of a threat of violence or aggression
afterwards also does not favour
the accused. Such factors if they existed, may well have lead to a
harsher sentence. However their
absence cannot serve to benefit the
accused in deciding whether substantial and compelling circumstances
exist.
[49]
It is not clear from the judgment whether the learned judge in the
court below actually put all the factors, both aggravating
and
mitigating, into the melting pot as suggested in
Malgas.
[50] The accused, a
stranger to the complainant, raped her soon after she had multiple
seizures and when she was, at best for him,
asleep. He did so when he
was in a position of trust and indeed betrayed that trust. The
complainant has been traumatised by the
rape and is likely to have
long-term residual effects as alluded to by Ms Smit.
[51] On the other
hand, it is true that the accused had the potential to contribute to
society and that he has a good family and
social background.
However, the
accused’s remorse was not directed at either the complainant or
the actual crime itself. It was more a matter
of apologising for
being in the predicament. To the extent that it was used to favour
the accused, it should not have been considered
as a mitigating
factor in the circumstances.
[52]
The mitigating factors and the aggravating circumstances, especially
the residual effects on the complainant as explained by
Ms Smit,
ought to have been balanced against each other in assessing whether
substantial and compelling circumstances existed or
not. Even if all
the mitigating and aggravating factors were balanced by the court
below, measured against the guidelines as set
out in
Malgas,
it
was wrong to conclude that substantial and compelling circumstances
do exist. Neither would the imposition of the prescribed
minimum
sentence be disproportionate to the offence itself and the
circumstances in which this offence was committed. The court
below
therefore misdirected itself in concluding that substantial and
compelling circumstances indeed exist and ought to have found
that
none existed.
[53] The effect of
this is that the accused must be sentenced in terms of
s 51(2)
of Act
105 of 1997. The minimum period of imprisonment in the case of a
first offender, as is the accused, is 10 years.
[54] The State
contented itself with the minimum prescribed sentence of 10 years’
imprisonment and did not suggest a harsher
period of imprisonment.
The appeal against sentence therefore succeeds”
[15]
In S
v Nkunkuma
and Others
2014
(2) SACR 168
(SCA) the Supreme Court of Appeal said (footnotes
omitted):
“
[9]
In S
v
Malgas
the
correct approach to establishing whether or not substantial and
compelling circumstances exist was set out as follows:
‘
[7]
. . . The very fact that this amending legislation has been enacted
indicates that Parliament was not content with that and
that it was
no longer to be “business as usual” when sentencing for
the commission of the specified crimes.
[8]
In what respects was it no longer to be business as usual? First, a
court was not to be given a clean slate on which to inscribe
whatever
sentence it thought fit. Instead, it was required to approach that
question conscious of the fact that the legislature
has ordained life
imprisonment or the particular prescribed period of imprisonment as
the sentence which should
ordinarily
be
imposed for the commission of the listed crimes in the specified
circumstances. In short, the Legislature aimed at ensuring a
severe,
standardised, and consistent response from the courts to the
commission of such crimes unless there were, and could be
seen to be,
truly convincing reasons for a different response. When considering
sentence the emphasis was to be shifted to the
objective gravity of
the type of crime and the public’s need for effective sanctions
against it. But that did not mean that
all other considerations were
to be ignored. The residual discretion to decline to pass the
sentence which the commission of such
an offence would ordinarily
attract plainly was given to the courts in recognition of the easily
foreseeable injustices which could
result from obliging them to pass
the specified sentences come what may.
[9]
Secondly, a court was required to spell out and enter on the record
the circumstances which it considered justified a refusal
to impose
the specified sentence. As was observed in
Flannery
v Halifax Estate Agencies Ltd
by
the Court of Appeal, “a requirement to give reasons
concentrates the mind, if it is fulfilled the resulting decision is

much more likely to be soundly based - than if it is not”.
Moreover, those circumstances had to be substantial and compelling.

Whatever nuances of meaning may lurk in those words, their central
thrust seems obvious. The specified sentences were not to be
departed
from lightly and for flimsy reasons which could not withstand
scrutiny. Speculative hypotheses favourable to the offender,
maudlin
sympathy, aversion to imprisoning first time offenders, personal
doubts as to the efficacy of the policy implicit in the
amending
legislation, and like considerations were equally obviously not
intended to qualify as substantial and compelling circumstances.
Nor
were marginal differences in the personal circumstances or degrees of
participation of co-offenders which, but for the provisions,
might
have justified differentiating between them. But for the rest I can
see no warrant for deducing that the legislature intended
a court to
exclude from consideration,
ante
omnia
as
it were, any or all of the many factors traditionally and rightly
taken into account by courts when sentencing offenders.’
(See
also
Director of
Public Prosecutions, KwaZulu-Natal v Ngcobo & others
2009
(2) SACR 361
(SCA); S
v
Fatyi
2001
(1) SACR 485
(SCA).)
[10]
In arriving at his conclusion that a departure from the minimum
sentence was warranted, the learned Judge stated: '[u]nder
all the
circumstances, and bearing in mind the “predictable outcomes”
mentioned in Matyityi, I am satisfied that the
prescribed minimum
sentences would be so disproportionate to the sentences which would
normally be imposed that it constitutes
substantial and compelling
circumstances permitting me to impose a lesser sentence.' It is
however unclear what exactly the learned
judge intended to convey by
that statement. The phrase ‘predictable outcomes’ does
not appear in
Matyityi.
Apart
from that, if he intended to follow
Matyityi,
its
import militates against the conclusion arrived at by the court
below. The court below was clearly alive to the provisions of
the
Act, but instead of starting its enquiry with the Act, as it ought
to, it sought guidance in a range of disparate cases. Those
cases
were however decided on their own peculiar facts. The starting point
in a matter such as this is the prescribed minimum sentences
ordained
by the legislature. To have approached the matter as if the
sentencing yardstick was the sentences imposed in those cases
and to
then ask whether the applicable minimum sentences could be considered
too severe against that benchmark constituted a misdirection.
This
court is thus at large to consider the question afresh.
...
[13] It is unclear
which factors were actually held by the court below to constitute
substantial and compelling circumstances. The
learned judge held:
'All three pleaded
alibi defences in the face of overwhelming evidence against them and
it is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion
that they are
unremorseful and do not appreciate what society demands of them.
However, I would be failing in my duties as a sentencing
officer if I
did not bear in mind their actual youthfulness and the relative
gravity of the crimes. Their not guilty pleas were
clearly misguided
and may not have been so much proof of their lack of remorse as proof
of their immaturity.'
[14]
Those factors do not without more constitute substantial and
compelling circumstances for as Ponnan JA pointed out in S
v
Matyityr.
‘
[13]
. . . There is, moreover, a chasm between regret and remorse. Many
accused persons might well regret their conduct, but that
does not
without more translate to genuine remorse. Remorse is a gnawing pain
of conscience for the plight of another. Thus genuine
contrition can
only come from an appreciation and acknowledgement of the extent of
one’s error. Whether the offender is sincerely
remorseful, and
not simply feeling sorry for himself or herself at having been
caught, is a factual question. It is to the surrounding
actions of
the accused, rather than what he says in court, that one should
rather look. In order for the remorse to be a valid
consideration,
the penitence must be sincere and the accused must take the court
fully into his or her confidence. Until and unless
that happens, the
genuineness of the contrition alleged to exist cannot be determined.
After all, before a court can find that
an accused person is
genuinely remorseful, it needs to have a proper appreciation of,
inter alia: what motivated the accused to
commit the deed; what has
since provoked his or her change of heart; and whether he or she does
indeed have a true appreciation
of the consequences of those actions.
There is no indication that any of this, all of which was peculiarly
within the respondent's
knowledge, was explored in this case.
[14] Turning to the
respondent’s age: what exactly about the respondent's age
tipped the scales in his favour, was not elaborated
upon by the
learned judge. During the course of the judgment reference was made
to the respondent's ‘relative youthfulness’,
without any
attempt at defining what exactly that meant in respect of this
particular individual. It is trite that a teenager is
prima facie to
be regarded as immature and that the youthfulness of an offender will
invariably be a mitigating factor, unless
it appears that the
viciousness of his or her deeds rule out immaturity. Although the
exact extent of the mitigation will depend
on all of the
circumstances of the case, in general a court will not punish an
immature young person as severely as it would an
adult. It is well
established that, the younger the offender, the clearer the evidence
needs to be about his or her background,
education, level of
intelligence and mental capacity, in order to enable a court to
determine the level of maturity and therefore
moral blameworthiness.
The question, in the final analysis, is whether the offender’s
immaturity, lack of experience, indiscretion
and susceptibility to
being influenced by others reduce his blameworthiness. Thus, whilst
someone under the age of 18 years is
to be regarded as naturally
immature, the same does not hold true for an adult. In my view a
person of 20 years or more must show
by acceptable evidence that he
was immature to such an extent that his immaturity can operate as a
mitigating factor. At the age
of 27 the respondent could hardly be
described as a callow youth. At best for him, his chronological age
was a neutral factor.
Nothing in it served, without more, to reduce
his moral blameworthiness. He chose not to go into the box, and we
have been told
nothing about his level of immaturity or any other
influence that may have been brought to bear on him, to have caused
him to act
in the manner in which he did.’
[15] Here the three
respondents breached the sanctity of their victims’ home.
Having made good their escape when TB returned,
they came back first
to rob her as well and then to force her into the veld where she was
raped more than once by first and third
respondents. It must have
been a terrifying ordeal for all of the victims. TB testified that
she felt forced to co-operate with
her attackers as she thought that
they were planning to kill her.
[16]
Rape and robbery have become serious social problems. It is not
difficult to take judicial notice of this phenomenon in the
light of
the number of such cases dealt with by the regional courts, the High
Courts and those which eventually come to this court.
The shocking
statistics regarding rape (albeit some eight years old), dealt with
in
S v De Beer
and
referred to in
Matyityi,
are
set out in the following quote:
‘
It
is widely accepted that the statistics of reported rape reflect only
a small percentage of actual offences. NICRO estimates that
only 1
out of every 20 rapes is reported, whilst the South African Police
Service puts the figure at 1 out of 35. For the first
six months of
1998, 23 374 rapes were reported nationally. As an annual indicator
of rape employing the lower 1 out of 20 estimate,
the figure was a
staggering 934 960. Research at the Sexual Offences Court in the
Western Cape, for the same period, reveals that
of the reported rape
cases: 56.62% were referred to court; 18.67% were prosecuted; and,
only 10.84% received guilty verdicts.’
[17] Rape must rank
as the worst invasive and dehumanising violation of human rights. It
is an intrusion of the most private rights
of a human being, in
particular a woman, and any such breach is a violation of a person’s
dignity which is one of the pillars
of our Constitution. There does
not seem to be any significant decline in the incidence of rape since
the publication of the statistics
referred to above. The same can be
said of robbery. No matter how they are viewed, society has called,
on more than one occasion,
for the courts to deal with offenders of
such crimes sternly and decisively.
...
[19] The position of
second respondent is different. His role appears to have been
substantially less than the others. There is
no evidence that he
actively assisted in taking TB out of the house. He also attempted to
re-assure BB, when her grandson was threatened
with electrocution. He
was barely 19 years old at the material time and has a clean record.
He was affected by his mother’s
wayward lifestyle though this
was somewhat balanced by his father’s teachings. He also tried
to assist in caring for what
was left of the family after his father
died by obtaining employment. He spent eleven months in custody
awaiting his trial. These
factors cumulatively constitute substantial
and compelling circumstances.
[20] However, the
sentence of an effective three years’ of imprisonment is
woefully inappropriate and is shockingly lenient
in the light of the
seriousness of the crimes and the manner in which they were
committed. The prescribed minimum sentence of 15
years’
imprisonment remains the starting point. In my view, taking all the
factors into consideration a reduction of 3 years
would be justified
in his case.”
[16] To suggest
then, taking all the circumstances of the case into account, that a
sentence of 15 years imprisonment is appropriate
and proportionate to
the crime would to my mind be doing an injustice and would not
properly address the triad in sentencing. In
this case the message
that is required to be sent out demands more attention than the other
factors. The sentence called for here
must be stern and decisive. The
starting point is life imprisonment and against that 15 years
imprisonment is simply too much of
a deviation. Taking into account
all the factors in this case, including the fact that the appellant
had spent some time in prison
prior to sentencing, I would consider a
sentence of 20 years imprisonment to be appropriate and
proportionate.
[17] I make the
following order:
a. The appeal
against sentence is upheld.
b. The sentence of
life imprisonment is set aside and substituted with one providing for
a sentence of 20 years imprisonment antedated
to 20 September 2004.
Vahed J
Chetty J
Appearances
For the Appellant: N
Nohiya
(Durban Justice
Centre)
For the Respondent:
N E S Buthelezi
(Director of Public
Prosecutions)
Date of Hearing: 30
January 2015
Date of Judgment: 19
February 2015