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By IOL Reporter 
22h ago
Cape Town – The death of a witness in the Senzo Meyiwa murder investigation is not expected to affect the outcome of the trial.
National police spokesman Brigadier Vish Naidoo confirmed on Monday that Thabang Makeleni, who submitted a statement to police last year, had died, TimesLive reported.
“If he was a key witness, we would have made the arrest (long ago) because he gave us a statement last year,” Naidoo said.
According to Naidoo, Makeleni’s statement did not greatly influence the success of recent arrests by police in the case.
Sunday World reported over the weekend that Thabang Makeleni, who was a student living in Vosloorus in 2014, not far from the home of singer Kelly Khumalo’s mother, was poisoned late last year.
This came a few months after Makeleni, who is from the Free State, made a statement to new investigators in which he allegedly linked the five suspects, currently charged with Meyiwa’s murder, to the crime scene.
Makeleni allegedly told police that five people had turned up at Khumalo’s mother’s home the night Meyiwa was shot and killed.
Naidoo told Sunday World: “The person who was allegedly killed by poisoning was one of the few people interviewed in connection with the investigation into the murder of Senzo Meyiwa.
“I’m not sure how he came to the conclusion that the arrests of the five suspects were the result of his ‘statement.’
“However, so far there has been no evidence to suggest that his death is in any way related to the investigation into the murder of Senzo Meyiwa.”
MESS
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