27-06-2025
Senzo Meyiwa trial focuses on alleged intruder's gold tooth
The lead investigator in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial, Brig Bongani Gininda, has told the Pretoria high court that no medical records could be found confirming whether one of the accused, Mthobisi Prince Mncube, had a gold tooth.
Gininda testified that he had made attempts during the investigation to access Mncube's medical records from the correctional facility to establish whether he had a gold tooth when he was admitted. However, the records were never located.
He said that it came to his attention that gold teeth are not always surgically fitted and can also be worn as removable grills.
This is after a picture depicting Mncube was beamed in court and Gininda described that in the picture Mncube appears to be smiling with a shiny object on his upper teeth resembling gold.
Some of the occupants in the house had said one of the intruders in the Vosloorus home when Meyiwa was murdered had a gold tooth.
Meyiwa was with his girlfriend Kelly Khumalo at her mother's house in Vosloorus, Ekurhuleni, and they were relaxing over lunch and watching a soccer match with Kelly's sister Zandile, Zandile's then-boyfriend Twala, and two of Meyiwa's friends who were visiting from KwaZulu-Natal.
The occupants of the house told police that two robbers entered, demanding cash and cellphones, before Meyiwa was shot in a scuffle with one of the intruders.
Mncube, Bongani Ntanzi, Muzikawukhulelwa Sibiya, Mthokoziseni Maphisa and Fisokuhle Ntuli are on trial for Meyiwa's murder in October 2014.
They face charges of murder, attempted murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, possession of an unlicensed firearm and possession of ammunition.
On Thursday, Gininda also told the court that Twala was not a person of interest in the murder of the soccer star.
This as advocate Charles Mnisi, representing Sibiya and Mncube, asked about the picture of bag of money found on Mncube, Twala and Kelly Khumalo's phones.
He had testified that a similar picture depicting a bag of money was found on their phones.
'You cannot focus on a person as a person of interest solely because of one bag or one piece of evidence. When it comes to Miss Kelly Khumalo, and I've testified about this, there are number of things that came up that seem to point to her as being the trigger point, and that is why I then said she was then viewed, in so far as the investigation is concerned, as a person of interest and subsequent application for the J50.'
Gininda previously testified that it had come up that Twala might have been the shooter, but he had to look at certain facts in the docket that led him to his conclusion that there were intruders.
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