V3615 Johan Christiaan Wessels

15

Wessels was eighteen years old when, together with three older men – Christo Viljoen, Frederik Swanepoel and Michael Mynhardt – he was charged with two counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances, rape and murder. They had robbed two men and had gang-raped Miss Elizabeth Mokoena before Wessels and Viljoen murdered her.

During the evening of 10 January 1986 Wessels, Viljoen and Swanepoel went to a drive-in cinema in Bethlehem and watched the film Mad Max starring Mel Gibson in the title role. They had twenty-four beers and drank most of them there. Afterwards they went to a dance at Loch Athlone. There was an altercation between Viljoen and some other men at the dance. They went to Mynhardt’s house where the drinking continued. They had a bottle of Klipdrift brandy with them and Mynhardt served more brandy from his own stock. They told Mynhardt of the trouble Viljoen had had at the dance. Viljoen asked Mynhardt to help them sort out those other men, who were thought to be soldiers from the Army base nearby. They left in Wessels’ bakkie to look for them. The bakkie was too small to seat all of them in the front so two of them had to ride in the loading bin.

They had lost track of time at this point, but it must have been near midnight when they left Mynhardt’s house. They were looking for trouble. They trawled through various parts of the town frequented by soldiers but could not find any. They were not looking for a specific soldier; any soldier would do for Viljoen’s revenge. Eventually they found themselves at the area set aside as a taxi rank and bus stop. They turned their wrath on three innocent people waiting for a bus. They were the deceased, Miss Elizabeth Mokoena, and her two brothers, Mr Lesia Mokoena and Mr Petrus Nkomo.

Mynhardt started by saying that he and his friends were policemen and demanded to see their identity documents. The two men had theirs but their sister did not. Mynhardt said she should be taken to the police station. They forced Miss Mokoena into the loading bin of the bakkie and they drove off. Viljoen was driving, Mynhardt sat in the cab with him and Wessels and Swanepoel rode at the back with Mokoena. Mokoena’s brothers were left at the bus stop. During the ride Wessels kicked Mokoena in the face for no reason. She pleaded with them. They drove to Loch Athlone on the Fouriesburg road. Viljoen stopped the bakkie at a secluded spot.

Mynhardt told Miss Mokoena to remove her clothes and she complied. Mynhardt then raped her. There was more drinking; they still had some of the Klipdrift and a litre of Coca-Cola left. Viljoen and Swanepoel then followed Mynhardt in raping the woman. Having done so they spurred Wessels on, calling him chicken. Finally he too then raped Miss Mokoena. When he had finished she said she was going to the police and got up. Wessels hit her on the back of her head with the empty Coca-Cola bottle. She was left there in a semi-conscious state as they drove off.

Mynhardt had to be back at work at six a.m. and asked them to take him home. They left him at his house. Wessels insisted on returning to the scene. They found Miss Mokoena on her knees, having recovered sufficiently from her ordeal to get up and to start dressing herself.

Wessels took a fishing knife from the glove box of the bakkie. Swanepoel told him not to stab her and tried to stop his friend, but Wessels ignored him. He walked over to Miss Mokoena and stabbed her six times, though one stab wound in her back was sufficiently mortal on its own, having punctured a lung. He then tried to cut her throat.

When they realised that she was still not dead Viljoen drove the bakkie over her. However, he failed to inflict any further injury because he had driven over her lengthwise, straddling her with the wheels. Wessels then took charge and drove over her twice, forwards and backwards, making sure that the wheels went over her each time.

They drove back to town. On the way Wessels ordered Viljoen to stop and he threw the knife into a pond. Having eventually gone their separate ways both went to bed.

Miss Mokoena’s partly dressed body was discovered late in the afternoon. She was lying on her back with her left hand across her breast and her right arm raised, fist clenched. Some items of clothing were lying nearby. The cause of death was established to be bleeding and a collapsed lung.

On 16 January 1986 the four men surrendered themselves to the Bethlehem police. At their trial they raised three principal defences. They contended that they were so drunk that they could not form the requisite intent to rape and, in any event, alleged that Miss Mokoena had consented to intercourse. As far as the murder charge was concerned, Mynhardt’s defence was that he had nothing to do with it; he had remained at his home when the other three went back to the scene. Swanepoel’s defence was that he too had had nothing to do with the killing and that he even tried to stop Wessels from killing Miss Mokoena. Wessels and Viljoen contended that they had been too drunk to form the intention to kill. Viljoen had an additional defence: that his actions had not contributed in any way to Miss Mokoena’s death.

The Court’s verdict was that all four accused were not guilty on the robbery charges. On the rape charge all four were convicted. On the murder charge Wessels and Viljoen were convicted and Swanepoel and Mynhardt were acquitted.

Counsel for Wessels submitted that three circumstances separately and cumulatively constituted extenuating circumstances: (a) the fact that Wessels had been only eighteen years and four months old at the time, (b) his susceptibility to the influence of others, and (c) the degree of intoxication. In Viljoen’s case, his lesser degree of participation, his relative youthfulness and the degree of intoxication were advanced as extenuating circumstances.

The Court concluded that extenuating circumstances had not been proved with regard to Wessels. In Viljoen’s case, however, the Court found that extenuating circumstances were present in his youthfulness, the fact that he had acted on the impulse of the moment, that he had not physically caused Miss Mokoena’s death, and that he had not been shown to have acted out of inherent wickedness.

On 2 October 1986 Wessels was sentenced to death and Viljoen to nine years imprisonment. Each of the four accused was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on the rape charge.

Wessels was twenty years old when he followed Scheepers onto the trapdoors.

Wierda and I made detailed notes about this case, mostly in the form of questions that had formed in our minds as we read the judgments and the submissions. We knew from what Labuschagne had told us that he had become attached to Wessels and we had to find a way to use that in his defence. What did the four men plot and discuss before they went to the police station to surrender themselves? Who had made the decision to surrender, to tell the police what had happened? Was the full truth ever told in Court, or was that a sanitised version put together to protect some of the others?

I also thought about Scheepers. There seemed to be no real basis for a comparison between him and Wessels. Scheepers had been the ringleader, a five-star psychopath, cruel, calculating and unrepentant. Wessels, on the other hand, appeared to have been a quiet, unassuming and withdrawn young man, a boy still on the verge of manhood. He had to be encouraged at the scene to participate in the rape of Miss Mokoena. The three other men were the leaders of the pack at that time and they were all older. Was Wessels trying to prove something to them? What turned Wessels into the leader when he returned to the scene with Viljoen? Whose idea had it been to return to the scene and kill Mokoena? When was that decision made?

I needed to understand why Wessels and the others had killed. What made them kill?

There was on obvious parallel between Wessels and Labuschagne, two young men from good homes who had started out as meek and well mannered but ended up killing. Was there a gang mentality in both cases? Did the teamwork of the hanging process turn Labuschagne into a killer even when on his own? The trial would provide some answers, but not clear answers.

By six o’clock we had run out of ideas and energy, and Wierda had a young family to tend, so we wrapped it up for the day. I called home and asked Liesl how the boys were. ‘As usual,’ she said, ‘fighting half the time and playing together the other half.’

At least things were normal back at home.