Van Breda axe trial witnesses suffer own ordeal

Imagine these words: "If you're upset by bullying tactics and loud voices, stay out of this courtroom."

Any layperson watching a criminal trial should heed these words of caution, especially if they're sitting in on the murder trial of Henri van Breda in the High Court in Cape Town.

He stands accused of killing his brother, Rudi, and parents, Martin and Teresa, and attempting to murder his younger sister Marli, and this week the heat was turned up as Henri's legal team was unleashed on state witnesses.

Kelly Phelps, a University of Cape Town criminal law expert who was the CNN correspondent for the Oscar Pistorius trial, said aggressive tactics were part of our system.

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This might be cold comfort to police forensic analyst Colonel Henry Stewart, who, by the end of his testimony about analysis of hair from the crime scene, was being described as a "so-called expert".

Van Breda's lawyer, Piet Botha, asked him about the length of hairs found in Marli's hand: "What are the chances that the hair could have come from my client's head on the day of the murder?"

Botha had a photograph that showed that Van Breda's hair on the day of the murder was much shorter than the hairs in question.

Stewart, who had not seen the photo and had not excluded Van Breda's head as the origin of the hair, replied: "Very slim." At this, Botha boomed: "I would say nil!"

Phelps said: "South Africa follows an adversarial model of justice [in which] the judge takes a more passive 'umpiring' role [during] vigorous cross-examination."

Next in the firing line was Stephanie Op't Hof, who lived opposite the Van Breda family at De Zalze in Stellenbosch at the time of the murders in January 2015.

She described the noise from 12 Goske Street between 10pm and midnight on the night of killings, insisting: "I have no doubt at all it was male voices having a fight and no doubt where it came from." Matthys Combrink, Botha's colleague, tried the "gaslighting" technique - convincing someone to doubt their perception of what they saw or heard. Op't Hof stood her ground, and Judge Siraj Desai finally reprimanded Combrink.

The following day, call centre operator Janine Philander - who took Van Breda's emergency call - faced his legal team. The call was played to a riveted courtroom, while Van Breda sat quietly sobbing. Afterwards, Philander said Van Breda had been "hesitant" and "cool as a cucumber", and set the tone early in the conversation with "a giggle".

Almost in a rage, Botha said the "giggle" was a stuttered form of the word "please" in one instance, and a sob in the other.

He played the clip again, asking more aggressively if Philander was sure of what she was saying. She angered Botha by saying: "It sounds even more like a giggle to me now."

The case continues tomorrow.