The South African hotel worker granted immunity from prosecution for his involvement in the killing of Anni Dewani has said he played “a leading role” in her murder.
Despite previously only admitting to being a middleman, Monde Mbolombo on Monday confirmed he was a key part of the plot to kill her.
Mbolombo was questioned on his role in Dewani’s death while giving evidence for the prosecution at her husband Shrien Dewani’s murder trial in Cape Town.
While the 34-year-old hotel receptionist insisted Dewani had died at her husband’s behest, he also admitted to being “very much in charge” of the fatal hijack plot.
“You took a leading role,”, Dewani’s trial judge Jeanette Traverso said. “I agree,” Mbolombo told the court.
Mbolombo was arrested four days after Anni Dewani’s body was discovered in an abandoned taxi in the dangerous Cape Town township of Gugulethu on the morning of 14 November 2010. He quickly admitted being the person who put the honeymooning Dewanis’ taxi driver, Zola Tongo, in touch with the two township criminals who carried out the murder.
But rather than charge him with any crime, South Africa’s criminal prosecution service, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), decided to offer him a deal. In return for giving truthful evidence against Dewani’s alleged killers, Mbolombo was promised immunity from prosecution.
Shrien Dewani’s trial has heard how Mbolombo abused the NPA’s trust by giving false evidence during the 2012 trial of hijacker Xolile Mngeni. “You lied in the State v Mngeni?”, Mbolombo was asked in court on Thursday. “That’s correct,” he replied.
On Monday Mbolombo went further and admitted that he had played a far more significant role in Anni Dewani’s death than he had previously admitted. Pointing to newly discovered video and audio evidence – which appeared to show Mbolombo coordinating Dewani’s killers’ movements in the hours before, during and after her death – Francois van Zyl, defending, told the state witness: “These calls confirm that you maintained a leading role.”
“I don’t dispute that,” the receptionist replied.
Mbolombo has made three confession statements, each of which, Shrien Dewani’s defence team has claimed, contradicts the evidence of the other.
Mbolombo told how he made the first two of these statements after having had the opportunity to discuss his arrest with some of his co-accused friends. But he said the gang did not coordinate their stories.
“Did you discuss what you will tell the police?” Van Zyl asked the witness. “We never discussed that at all,” Mbolombo replied.
Closing his cross-examination, Dewani’s barrister told Mbolombo that his evidence had consisted of lies, on the back of which he had unjustly been granted immunity. “I’ll argue at the end of this trial that with you, one never knows where the lies stop or if they will ever stop,” Van Zyl said.
Mbolombo countered: “I admit there are things I did not include in my statements but everything I’m saying here is as it was.”
Shrien Dewani denies any involvement in a plot to kill his wife. His trial continues.
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