In this episode, we tackle and unpack the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial that is currently ongoing.

My two co-hosts, H and GT are both law graduates and we had also invited our 4th friend who is also a law graduate and has been paying close attention to this case, to come join us in trying to make sense of this messy trial.

This is by no means an attempt to reveal some hidden mysteries of this case or to resolve it, but we simply try to make sense of the information that is already in the public domain.

Furthermore, this podcast should be treated separately from my and my co-hosts’ professional careers, as it is simply a casual conversation amongst ourselves as ordinary members of the public.

Even though my co-hosts’ insights are incredibly useful and interesting in making sense of this case, they should never be treated as legal or professional opinion or advice under any circumstances.

Senzo Meyiwa trial, which we kick start by looking back at the origins of this case, and the unfolding of events as they took place over the years, before we saw the resumption of this case again now in 2022. I thought this might be a useful way to remind ourselves of a broader context of where we find ourselves today in this case, and how the public conversation surrounding this case has evolved over time.

Many might argue, including myself, that the change in the tide of this case in the court of public opinion is around the time when the NPA erroneously leaked the details around the controversial second docket in 2019, and this is also exactly a point where our conversation also takes a different turn.

You will notice a thread throughout this episode of me asking some really basic questions that many of us are too embarrassed to ask about how the different cogs within our justice system work and interface with one another, I ask for definitions of some of the jargon the lawyers like to use and hide behind so that they can charge crazy fees, that you will hear my co-host casually use as well. So I did the heavy lifting for you here, and it was not easy, as you will hear GT’s uncontrollable laughter at some of my seemingly imbecilic questions.

Which brings me to a second reason I wanted us to have this conversation. The law and the justice system affects us all, yet, an average South African like myself knows so little about it, and on the other hand, the concepts used by the lawyers and the legal texts to describe some of the basic principles are so lofty and very intimidating to a pedestrian like myself. So I thought this Senzo Meyiwa trial would be a good case study to learn a few of some of these concepts in a criminal case like this one and in a digestible fashion and with immediate real life application and examples from an actual trial.

Lastly, we had a discussion about Advocate Teffo, which took a very interesting turn that I could have never predicted. Our guest co-host revealed that the man did not complete his pupilage, which is some kind of formalized training for advocates. This revelation opens up a debate which highlights the nature and the route of acquiring the status of prestige within the advocacy field, which is one way of looking at that conversation, another way to look at it, especially if you are studying towards a law career, is that the discussion provides some career guidance on what you need to look out for if you want to practice as an advocate, especially given the new regulation that has come into effect recently that GT educated us about.

We also discuss the usual suspects in this case, Kelly Khumalo, Longwe and Chiko Thwala, Maggie Phiri, and many other characters and subtopics.