R v Patel

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Judge: Steyn CJ, A B Beyers JA and Holmes AJA
• Judgment Date: 18 May 1959
• Citation: 1959 (3) SA 121 (A)
• Hearing Date: 08 May 1959
• Court: Appellate Division

A Holmes, A.J.A.:

The appellant, a young Indian, appeals against his conviction, by HIEMSTRA, J., and two assessors, of the crime of culpable homicide, and against his sentence of three years' imprisonment with compulsory labour.

The trial Court was confronted with a difficult task because nine of the B fifteen witnesses were found, whether for the Crown or the defence, to be thoroughly unreliable and untruthful.

As to the factual background, the following outline may be pieced together with some probability. The appellant's father, Patel senior, owns a shop and, to quote from the judgment, he

'does business inter alia by selling glassware to various young Indians C who barter these for clothes which are then sole. Out of the proceeds of the clothes they pay Patel Snr. On the morning of the 14th May the deceased, who had also done some business with Patel Snr., left his jacket with Patel Snr. as security for the money that he owed. In the evening the deceased came back to redeem his jacket. When he came there, there were a number of other young Indians who, during the day, had been engaged on this business which I have described, in Johannesburg. The deceased first sent in a young girl, Bhagki Govender, with the instructions that she should get his jacket back from Patel Snr. She was D unsuccessful and he then went in himself. The jacket was refused because there was a dispute as to whether the deceased was offering the full amount that he owed. This refusal led to a quarrel (between Patel senior and the deceased) which was variously described as quite an angry scuffle and by other witnesses as merely an argument'.

The appellant intervened. The upshot was that the deceased left or was E expelled from the shop in anger, and the door was closed. What happened immediately thereafter is the subject of such flat contradiction and evasion that one has the impression of being without a compass in an uncharted sea of falsehood. However at some stage shortly thereafter the deceased was either in the vicinity of the door of the shop or, as at least one witness put it, noisily banging and kicking at the door. The F appellant's younger brother, Baboo (aged sixteen years) opened the door (or it may have been someone else) and there is some evidence that very shortly thereafter Baboo called out for help. Thereupon the appellant walked through the shop to the door. He says (and the trial Court found in effect that this might...