Durban — Three years ago, a Transnet engineer was kidnapped from his Pinetown home, forced into his car and driven to a forest in Ozwathini where he was murdered.
On Tuesday (today), his wife, accused of having ordered the hit on him, will hear the ruling in the Durban High Court.
It took nearly a year for the trial, marred by delays brought on by the accused, to see finality.
On September 29, 2020, Nkosi Timmy Langa was allegedly bundled into his Isuzu X-Rider at his home near Hampshire Place in Pinetown and taken to a forest in Ozwathini by his brother-in-law, Nkosinathi Steve Zungu, and James Mashudu “Ramaphosa” Mthimkhulu.
At the time, police investigations led to Mthimkhulu’s arrest after the recovery of Langa’s car.
Mthimkhulu, who is already serving time for his part in the murder, became a State witness in the murder trial. His testimony is that he and Zungu had killed Langa at the behest of his wife, Nomphumelelo Patricia Goncalves, who was a nurse at Isipingo Hospital at the time of the alleged murder.
His evidence was that after being picked up in Durban by Goncalves, she allegedly drove them to Pinetown and dropped them off near her home for them to await her signal to enter.
Once this was received, he said, he, Zungu and another person gained entry to the couple’s home, with the gate having been left unlocked by Gonclaves. She had also allegedly told the men that she would ensure that she and Langa were in her daughter’s room, where he would not be able to access the panic button.
Mthimkhulu told the court that Zungu opened the top half of the stable door and then the bottom.
Once inside the house, he said, Langa tried to run out of the house, but they grabbed him and bound his hands behind his back with an electric cord of an iron that had been on an ironing board inside the house.
The three men were armed with a knife, and threatening Langa with death, they forced him to give them his PIN numbers for his bank cards and then they took him with them in his car.
He said they drove to an unknown place outside Durban, where they ended Langa’s life.
WhatsApp your views on this story to 071 485 7995.
Daily News