Defence maintains Senzo Meyiwa was possibly shot by one of the people in the Khumalo household

Advocate Zithulele Nxumalo, representing one of the five men implicated in the murder of football star Senzo Meyiwa, has put it to the state's first witness, Zandile “Zandi” Khumalo, that inconsistencies in her evidence and the statements she made suggest Meyiwa was shot by one of the people in the house and there was no robbery.

“The deceased did not shoot himself,” said Nxumalo.

Picking up where he left off on Friday, Nxumalo wanted to show inconsistencies and contradictions in her statement from the evidence she gave in court.

After pointing out the alleged inconsistencies on Friday, on Monday he started by reading all three statements Zandile made between 2014 and 2018 and said there were inconsistencies.

However, Zandile said she was merely telling what she knew.

“I cannot come here in court to lie to the court and police,” she said.

Zandile's evidence was that two intruders barged into the house, demanding money and cellphones in isiZulu.

She testified that three gunshots went off in the Vosloorus house the night Meyiwa was killed in October 2014. The house was Zandile and her sister Kelly Khumalo's mother's home.

The two women, their mother, Meyiwa, Longwe Twala and two of Meyiwa's friends from KwaZulu-Natal, Mthokozisi Thwala and Tumelo Madlala, had reportedly been relaxing in the house, drinking and watching soccer.

Text messages sent by Kelly to Zandile were admitted as evidence on Friday.

A text from Kelly read: “All I can do is hope and pray that each day I am getting to my day of being free from him.”

Nxumalo said the text and other strings of text messages by Kelly demonstrate a pattern to eliminate the deceased and that he was killed by one of the people who were in the Vosloorus home.

Further combing through the statements, in one Zandile said she was surprised her then boyfriend, Twala, ran from the Vosloorus home, leaving her behind on the night the soccer star was gunned down.

“I have never asked him up until today,” she said in her statement.

Zandile further said one of the intruders was dark in complexion and she would be able to point him out on sight. She said in the statement that the first gunshot hit the kitchen door while a second shot hit the floor and that she heard the third shot while hiding in the bathroom.

Zandile testified that the two last gunshots went off while she was in the bathroom.

She pointed out one of the accused Bongani Ntanzi as the second intruder who entered the house. She told the court last week that she had her suspicions of the first intruder who wielded a gun but did not want to point the person out based on suspicions.

She disputed claims by Twala in her 2018 statement, stating in one of them that she has no idea what made him think the suspects were foreigners, as they spoke pure isiZulu. She said Twala was nowhere to be found after Meyiwa was shot and was only seen in the hospital when he arrived with her mother.

Nxumalo also read an SMS from Twala sent to a number identified as Twala 2: “Senzo is dead, they just shot him in front of us,” saying it suggests Senzo was shot in the presence of Twala.

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