Advocate Dan Teffo quits as the first four accused’s lawyer in the Senzo Meyiwa trial, Claiming that he was harassed by the court and the state.
“I can no longer continue in this court based on the harassment I am receiving, both from the state and from the court,” said Teffo to the high court in Pretoria on tuesday.
Teffo added that he will return to being the family’s watching brief, as request by Senzo’s brother Sifiso Meyiwa.
Teffo was supposed to deliver his interlocutory application to the court to challenge the Pretoria high court’s jurisdiction to adjudicate Senzo’s murder trial, according to Maumela’s order on 14 June.
Teffo ignored the court’s order and did not submit application for his challenge. Instead, he submitted a letter from the third accused in the trial, Mthobisi Ncube who alleged that he had been tortured and exposed to harsh conditions inside Tshwane’s Kgosi Mampuru II prison, where he is being held.
“I am held in mechanical restraints once outside my cell for any reason, including to visit [other inmates]. The food we are getting is not fit for an adult person,” reads the letter submitted by Teffo from Mthobisi Ncube.
Meyiwa was killed in October 2014 at the family home of his then girlfriend, singer Kelly Khumalo, in what the state alleges to have been a botched house robbery.
