"There’s no way I can ever forget his face because he made me see something that I had never seen"

Blue Bulls rugby player Phindile Joseph Ntshongwana attacked another man with an axe, a witness to the crime told the Durban High Court heard on Tuesday.

State witness Sihle Vincent Mhlongo said he saw Ntshongwana attack Simon Ngidi on March 23, 2011, in Umbilo, Durban, opposite his house.

He is charged with the murder of Thembelenkosini Cebekhulu in Montclair on March 20, 2011, Paulos Hlongwa two days later, Ngidi the following day, and an unidentified man sometime that week.

All were hacked to death with an axe.

Ntshongwana is further accused of kidnapping and raping a woman on November 28, 2010, and faces a charge of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Mhlongo said he had finished studying at 3am when he heard a man screaming. He opened his curtain to investigate and saw a man chasing another.

Mhlongo said he first thought the man who was chasing was carrying a stick.

The pursuer struck the fleeing man, who fell.

“The attacker continued assaulting him. Then I realised he was chopping him with an axe,” Mhlongo said.

He told the court Ntshongwana hacked at Ngidi for about 10 minutes.

“When I opened the curtain I thought he would stop, but he didn’t,” Mhlongo said.

He shouted to Ntshongwana to stop what he was doing.

“He stopped, looked in my direction and ran away towards town,” Mhlongo said.

He told the court he saw Ntshongwana’s face because the street lights and some of the neighbouring houses’ lights were on.

During cross-examination, Ntshongwana’s attorney Themba Mjoli asked Mhlongo if it was possible that he had recognised Ntshongwana from pictures published in newspapers.

“There’s no way I can ever forget his face because he made me see something that I had never seen,” Mhlongo said.

Mjoli told the court Ntshongwana had no recollection of the crime because he was mentally ill.

He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a bipolar condition.

Another State witness, Nombuso Pearl Hadebe, testified that she saw Ntshongwana attack a man, later identified as Paulos Hlongwa, on March 22, 2011, in Lamontville, Durban, around 11pm.

She was home when she saw Ntshongwana chopping something and putting it in a plastic bag. She thought it was a person. She was about 13m away and said the man with the axe was wearing a white T-shirt, navy pants and a cap.

Constable Protas Mbuzeni Mbhele told the court he had responded to a call about a body found on March 22 in Lamontville. When he arrived in Gwala Street he found a man’s decapitated corpse. The head was in a dustbin about a kilometre away.

Hlongwa’s fiancée identified him.

The trial continues.