S. African Man Fed Worker To Lions

A white South African farmer and his employee were convicted Thursday of attacking a black worker and throwing him into a lion enclosure in a case that shocked a nation still coming to terms with its apartheid past.

Judge George Maluleke in the northern town of Phalaborwa ruled that Mark Scott-Crossley and Simon Mathebula were guilty of murder in the January 2004 murder of Nelson Chisale.

Chisale, 41, had been fired two months earlier, apparently for running a personal errand during work hours. He was attacked when he returned to Scott-Crossley's farm to collect some belongings. Chisale was beaten with machetes, tied up and driven in Scott-Crossley's truck to a nearby lion reserve and thrown over the fence.

Both Scott-Crossley and Mathebula had pleaded innocent and tried to blame each other for the killing. The men will be sentenced in August.

Much of the testimony revolved around whether Scott-Crossley, 37, ordered the killing — as his workers claimed — and whether Chisale was still alive when he was thrown to the lions.

Delivering his verdict after a three-month trial, the judge said ample evidence showed that the victim was still alive when he was thrown into the white lion breeding enclosure in one of the many private game reserves that abound in South Africa's southeast.

"The evidence of guilt is overwhelming," Maluleke told a packed and tense court.

Some 23 witnesses and a variety of forensic experts gave evidence, which included shreds of Chisale's bloodstained shirt and trousers. The lions left only a few bones, part of his skull and the end of one finger.

The trial opened amid protests from demonstrators that the killing was a racial attack. The victim was black and the farm owner who attacked him is white. Mathebula, who is black, was also employed by Scott-Crossley.

Mathebula was found guilty of helping Scott-Crossley by carrying out his instructions and even washing blood off the truck the day after the murder.

Maluleke ruled that Scott-Crossley had held a grudge against Chisale after the former farm worker complained about low pay and poor conditions to labor authorities, according to the South African Press Association.

The judge said Scott-Crossley dismissed Chisale and even banned from his game farm but the "bad blood" between them spilled over the day of Chisale's murder when he arrived at the farm to collect some belongings.

The case highlighted the currents of violence that run through impoverished rural areas, as well as the harsh treatment meted out to farm laborers, who are usually black or mixed-race, by their bosses, who are usually white.

The trial of a third suspect was postponed after he fell sick with tuberculosis. A fourth suspect turned state witness and has been promised indemnity from prosecution.

Scott-Crossley's lawyer, Johann Engelbrecht, had argued in closing testimony last week that Mathebula carried out the attack along with the other two suspects. He said Scott-Crossley didn't participate in the assault and merely helped dispose of the body after being threatened by one of the attackers.

Prosecutors contended that Scott-Crossley masterminded the murder and acted with premeditation when he ordered his workers to load Chisale into the back of his truck and drive to Hoedspruit, about 250 miles north-east of Johannesburg, and near the famed Kruger National Park.

Early in the trial, Scott-Crossley's bail of $41,000 was withdrawn after he grabbed a witness by his T-shirt in court and muttered something to him.

Claire Nullis