Gangster State

in late April 2008 and was presided over by Magistrate Dawn
Soomaroo.
The most shocking revelation to surface at the inquiry related to the
police’s handling of the recordings of the phone calls made on the night
of the murder. ‘An overseas sound expert, who initially testified that a
recording of the 10111 call had some distinct sound which could
possibly be gunshots in the background, later conceded the opposite
after listening to another recording made at the same time,’ reported the
Mail & Guardian in its coverage of the inquiry.^27
The first recording was of Nokwanda’s 10111 call from the cordless
phone. The second was of her brother Bongani’s cellphone call to the
police. This second recording was much clearer, and it was apparent
that the sounds in the background were not gunshots, but the
investigating officers for some reason failed to give it to the expert from
abroad. In other words, the police had withheld crucial evidence from
one of the state’s key witnesses.
The inquiry also heard from Advocate Willem Edeling, who had
represented Nokwanda during the criminal trial. He alleged that the
police had tortured Bongani in order to extract a confession.^28
Nokwanda told me about the curious nature of their arrest and
Bongani’s alleged torture. ‘We were arrested by SAPS members from
Queenstown [in the Eastern Cape] and not by the police in
Bloemfontein,’ she said. According to Nokwanda, before they were
charged, the police ‘smuggled’ Bongani out of the Free State and took
him to East London, where he was tortured.
Bongani had detailed his alleged abduction and torture in an affidavit
made in 2005. He claimed under oath that the Eastern Cape police had
stripped him naked, poured water over him and given him electric