Johannesburg – The Johannesburg High Court today dismissed Ntuthuko Shoba’s discharge application. Shoba, the alleged mastermind behind Tshegofatso Pule’s gruesome murder in 2020, is fighting hard to avoid time in jail.
During today’s proceedings, Shoba’s defence team argued that the state could not prove that he orchestrated the killing of his then girlfriend, Pule, who was heavily pregnant at the time of her killing, as suggested by witnesses who took the stand to testify in the past two weeks.
Shoba’s lawyer, advocate Norman Makhubela, had applied for his client to be discharged in terms of section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The section stipulates that if the court has no substantive evidence to prove the accused guilty, they should be released from custody.
Makhubela insisted that there is no evidence to prove that his client committed the crime.
Taking to the witness stand, Shoba told the court that there was never a committed relationship between him and Pule, saying theirs was just an “illicit affair”.
“We would meet each other on social spaces and sometimes decide to spend the night together,” Shoba told the court.
He took it up a notch, telling the court that it was not the first time Pule was pregnant in 2020, revealing that the couple had agreed to an abortion when Pule fell pregnant the previous year.
“She told me around the end of January 2020 about the second pregnancy, three months into it,” said Shoba.
He explained further that he never wanted Pule to terminate the pregnancy in 2019 because he wanted a child with her, hence she conceived again in 2020.
Shoba further told the court that the deceased knew that he was in a committed relationship.
Shoba, who is alleged to have hired the convicted killer Muzikayise Malephane in June 2020 to kill Pule, has denied ordering a hit on her. But Malephane had since spilled the beans that Shoba orchestrated the murder for R70 000.
Pule was shot dead and found hanging from a tree in Florida Park, Rooderpoort in 2020.
Just before the court adjourned, Shoba was asked to explain why he was in contact with convicted killer Malephane. He said he wanted cigarettes as they were not sold in the stores due to hard restrictions of lockdown at that time.
He will remain in custody and will continue with his testimony again on Tuesday, 15 February.
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