The appellant, an electrical engineer and part-time bouncer, was convicted in the Johannesburg Regional Court of robbery with aggravating circumstances and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. The conviction arose from an incident on 18 March 2006 in Hillbrow, where the complainant alleged that the appellant and another man robbed him at gunpoint of his cellphone using what later turned out to be a toy gun. The appellant was apprehended at the scene and arrested. The appellant denied the allegations and claimed instead that the complainant and his associates had attacked and robbed him, falsely implicating him due to prior altercations between them at a nightclub where the appellant worked. The appellant led evidence of several prior incidents involving the complainant, including assaults and the confiscation of a firearm, which were partially corroborated by documentary evidence and his employer’s testimony. The State’s case relied mainly on the uncorroborated evidence of the complainant as a single witness.
The appeal succeeded. The conviction and the sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment were set aside.
The case reaffirms fundamental principles of South African criminal law relating to the burden of proof, the evaluation of single-witness testimony, and the proper approach to assessing an accused’s version. It underscores the danger of overreliance on demeanour, the necessity of corroboration where available, and the requirement that an accused’s version must be accepted if it is reasonably possibly true.