In reaction to the sentencing of the Coligny duo, the civil rights organisation AfriForum said that it would support Pieter Doorewaard and Phillip Schutte from Coligny to appeal their sentencing. This comes after Bonakele Pakisi, the only eyewitness in the murder case against them, admitted to lying in court when testifying that he had seen Doorewaard and Schutte killing the teenager Matlhomola Moshoeu.
AfriForum will fund the appeal costs to allow Adv. Barry Roux SC to take on the case. Adv. Gerrie Nel and his team at AfriForum’s private prosecution unit also provides support in investigating the case. The application to appeal will be brought within fourteen days.
The investigative team of AfriForum’s private prosecution unit has already obtained affidavits from four different people. These affidavits point to Pakisi confessing to them about lying in court and that his confession was recorded.
According to Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, apart from helping Doorewaard en Schutte, his organisation wants to ensure that Pakisi is prosecuted criminally for having committed perjury. According to Kriel, it is important that those who spread lies to create racial tension and falsely labelling innocent people as racists be brought to book.
“Just like Doorewaard and Schutte’s lives were destroyed by lies, we recently saw in Schweizer-Reneke how racist troublemakers disrupted the life of Elana Barkhuizen, a competent teacher, with lies and misrepresentations. The time has come to make an example of liars and racist troublemakers,” Kriel says.