The State of Forensics in South Africa
Creative Commons License, West Midlands Police via Compfight
A stripper is found murdered at a bachelor party in Miami. The CSI team is there within minutes, perfectly blow-dried and ready to collect conviction-ensuring evidence. They return to the lab and run a hair sample they found at the crime scene through their supercomputer. The sample contains mitochondrial DNA that gets a hit on CODIS. A police raid, headed by the CSI team, is authorised on the suspect’s house. The team barge in and arrest the culprit (jealous ex-boyfriend). After 40 minutes, a few snappy one-liners and a slick montage the bad man goes to jail.
Mpho Sibanze and Bongani Malinga are stabbed early on a spring morning in 2006. A seriously injured Mpho is able to phone her family for help. Rushing to her location, Mpho’s family find her bleeding from a gash in her throat. Bongani’s body is found in the neighbouring grassland. On the way to the hospital Mpho names her attacker. She dies a day later.
Tsidiso Hlongwane – the man fingered for the crime – is arrested nearly two years later. The South Gauteng High Court acquits him of all charges after a trial that lasts only three days. Despite there being a number of items found at the scene that are believed to belong to Hlongwane, the police fail to conduct any DNA tests that could link these items to him. The case is bungled by the forensic system and an accused multiple-murderer never even has to answer to the charges against him…
Read the rest of this excellent article by Shaun Swingler at The Daily Maverick.
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