Musa Kekana
Image: ITUMELENG ENGLISH / IOL
A paramedic who treated Musa Kekana hours after his arrest told the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday that he had told her police assaulted him.
She did not record the allegation in her notes and did not mention it to the doctor who admitted Kekana to Edenvale Hospital.
Mary Ngapela, who was working as an ambulance emergency assistant for Netcare 911 at the time, gave evidence in a trial-within-a-trial in the case against Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and his four co-accused.
Matlala, a tenderpreneur, is in the dock with his wife, Kekana, Tiego Floyd Mabusela and Nthabiseng Zandile Nzama.
It is the state's case that Matlala ordered three hit plots between August 2022 and January 2024, targeting taxi boss Joe "Ferrari" Sibanyoni, his former girlfriend, actress Tebogo Thobejane, and music producer Seunkie "DJ Vetteys" Mokubung.
Bystanders were caught in the gunfire each time, which is why the five face 11 counts of attempted murder among 25 charges.
All five have pleaded not guilty.
Kekana, accused number one, is challenging the admissibility of evidence obtained by police following his arrest on April 17, 2024.
His advocate Riaan Gissing told the court police officers assaulted Kekana at a house in Kew, Johannesburg.
He said they allegedly beat him, tied him up and suffocated him with a plastic courier bag.
Police witnesses previously denied the allegations.
Ngapela said she was called to Eighth Road in Kew that afternoon, where she found Kekana sitting on the side of the road in handcuffs, with a private paramedic already attending to him.
His blood pressure was 153/100, and his heart rate was 116, both elevated. She recorded his level of consciousness as full and his pain score as zero out of 10.
State advocate Elize le Roux then asked Ngapela what Kekana had told her.
"He did mention that in our language that he was assaulted by the police," Ngapela said.
Le Roux asked why that did not appear in her report.
"I treated the case as a medical case as it came to me as a medical case," she said.
Under cross-examination, Gissing asked whether her training required her to document what she observed and what she was told.
"Yes, sir," Ngapela said.
He asked whether it had been correct not to record it.
"No, it was not," she said.
"I should have recorded it."
Gissing put it to her that she could give the court no plausible reason for leaving it out. She agreed.
He asked whether it had crossed her mind that the blood Kekana was coughing up might have come from the assault he had described.
"It did cross my mind, but the moment he mentioned that he was hospitalised two weeks ago and he was intubated, then I continued as a medical case," Ngapela said.
She said the treatment she gave, oxygen and a drip, would have been the same either way.
Ngapela also told the court she had not told the receiving doctor at Edenvale Hospital, listed on the handover form as one "Dr Naidoo", that Kekana had alleged an assault.
Gissing asked whether it had been necessary to do so.
"It was necessary," she said.
Advocate Annelene van den Heever, for Matlala and his wife, Tsakani, questioned Ngapela about the hour Kekana spent at a property in Fifth Road, Kew, after police instructed the ambulance crew to follow them there.
Ngapela said she left Kekana seated on the driveway and returned to her vehicle, checking on him periodically to record his vital signs.
Van den Heever questioned how a paramedic could leave a patient in the care of people with no medical training.
"I don't remember them stating that we should leave, but we did leave the patient there," Ngapela said.
She said that when she asked why police wanted him, she was told there was an investigation.
Van den Heever put it to her that Kekana's blood pressure and heart rate never came down in the time she monitored him, and that stress or fear were known causes.
Ngapela agreed.
She was then asked whether being choked and deprived of oxygen could explain the coughing of blood.
"If there's trauma to the throat and the chest, then there is a possibility," she said.
Van den Heever also took her through how her statement came to be made.
Ngapela said a female sergeant phoned her at the end of July or the beginning of August, more than two years after the call-out, and that she told the officer she did not have her documents.
She said the sergeant and two colleagues later came to her house, brought her patient report form with them, and typed her statement on a laptop while she spoke.
Judge Cassim Moosa asked whether Kekana had been taken to a police station at any point between 12.52pm and 4.29pm that day, when he was booked into Edenvale Hospital.
"No," Ngapela said.
Moosa also asked about the pain score.
Ngapela said it stayed at zero throughout, based on what Kekana told her.
The trial-within-a-trial continues on Wednesday.
**IOL News **
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