Pretoria – The group of seven men arrested in connection with the gruesome murder of Zimbabwean national Elvis Nyathi in Diepsloot are today scheduled to return to the Randburg Magistrate’s Court.
The group was in court earlier this week, facing charges including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery with aggravating circumstances, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and extortion.
Nyathi was beaten and burnt to death in Diepsloot earlier this month.
The attack on Nyathi comes after Diepsloot residents embarked on a protest for several days and targeted foreign nationals, accusing them of committing crimes in the area.
The accused men – who are all South African – are reported to be part of increasing vigilante groups who go around demanding passports or a fee from foreign nationals in the informal settlements.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson in Gauteng, Phindi Mjonondwane, said the men allegedly robbed some of the victims of their belongings and demanded money in exchange for the release of those in captivity.
Initially, 14 suspects were arrested. However, due to a lack of evidence, the other seven suspects were released.
The matter was postponed to today, while the seven remain in custody as they arrange legal representation.
Earlier this week, the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema, called on the people of Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa to forgive South Africa and its people for “the misdemeanours and criminality of a few, misled by the lack of uBuntu, to hate Africans in Africa”.
On Monday, the EFF joined the people of Africa and the world in celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the independence of Zimbabwe from British colonialism.
“The atrocities of Cecil Rhodes are imprintable, but still the government of South Africa finds no offence in keeping this brutal colonialist’ name in a South African institute of higher learning, the so-called Rhodes University,” said EFF national spokesperson Sinawo Thambo.
He further said: “Statues of brutal white settlers, and amongst them, Cecil Rhodes are still at public spaces of South Africa, at the behest of the ruling party and its enablers, white monopoly capital”.
Thambo said this independence anniversary comes at a time of heightened Afrophobia that resulted in a violent and merciless killing of Nyathi from Diepsloot, who was accused of “stealing” jobs.
Thambo said they recalled with deep sense of shock the death of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, who was beaten, stabbed and set alight in an informal settlement in 2015 for selling sweets in a street that deemed such as stealing of jobs and opportunities for South Africans.
Thambo said, to date, no one has been arrested for this gruesome act of inhumanity.
IOL