Flashbacks, anonymous phone calls and an impending court appearance have all been weighing heavily on the mind of a 23-year-old student who is accused of murdering a man who was trying to rob him.
Outraged Bay residents have rallied behind Nelson Mandela University final-year IT student Athenkosi Zenani.
He faces a murder charge after he allegedly stabbed to death a man who, he said, robbed him last weekend.
Zenani appeared in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday and was released on R500 bail.
He is accused of murdering Ali Msabaha, 30.
The incident happened in the early hours of Sunday morning while he was walking with friends to a house in Richmond Hill after a night out.
The friends were allegedly attacked by Msabaha and another man.
The state alleges the men robbed Zenani of a cellphone and this led to a scuffle, during which Zenani grabbed a knife from one of the assailants and allegedly fatally stabbed him.
Angry The Herald readers shared their views on the Facebook post relating to the incident, saying Zenani should have been commended for ridding the streets of a criminal.
During the Facebook conversation, strangers – to Zenani and each other – decided to raise funds to reimburse his bail money and possibly contribute to future legal fees.
Zenani said he was immensely grateful for the outpouring of support, saying it would help him cope with the traumatic event.
“It has been a very difficult week. I am having regular flashbacks of what happened.
“I have also received random phone calls from people who claim they want to help, then ask for my address,” Zenani said.
“When I ask who is speaking they put down the phone.
“I don’t know where they got my number from.
“This week I have just tried to keep myself busy with anything to avoid thinking about what happened.”
Zenani said he had returned to his family home in East London this week, following the incident.
“It keeps on running through my mind. I don’t really know where the guys came from.
“I was walking with my friends talking on the phone. The next thing the guy came from behind and grabbed my phone.
“The adrenaline took over and I managed to disarm him.
“And with the adrenaline pumping I acted, and now I am facing a murder charge. This week has just been so overwhelming, I am just trying to manage it day by day,” he said.
One of those trying to help Zenani, Shuaib Agherdien, asked all those who believe the charges against the young man are an injustice to contribute towards his bail.
Agherdien pledged the first R100 himself.
Just under 24 hours and 41 replies later more than 30 people had agreed to contribute at least R50 towards Zenani’s bail.
Agherdien said he was not in a position to make a judgment on whether or not Zenani was guilty.
However, he felt the young man had done well by standing up for himself.
“The law will run [its] course and decide whether he acted within his rights.
“[Sadly] we live in a crime-ridden country where people are killed, mugged, raped and hijacked on a daily basis.
“And for this young man to have taken a stand and defended himself in the alleged attack – I as a male South African look up to him,” Agherdien said.
Some Facebookers were so touched by Zenani’s predicament they said they would attend his next court appearance, on January 31.
Zenani’s sister, Spharas Kenani (nee Zenani), said the family was grateful for the support and had subsequently set up a Facebook page #freezenani where she could be contacted to receive any donations.
“We are yet to tell our parents [about the incident and arrest]. We [have] arranged a meeting this weekend to tell them but I know it’s not going to be easy as my mother is not in a good state of health and it will have a big impact on her,” she said.
“The public have been reaching out. We are especially humbled by people coming forward to assist financially as we really do need the funds to cover our legal representative.”
Zenani said following the incident he had deleted all his social media accounts, and that a picture of a young man used in some social media posts about his situation was not of him.
“I don’t know who the guy is in the photo on the Facebook accounts.”
According to advocate Terry Price, in order to prove his innocence, Zenani would likely have to argue he acted out of “non-pathological automatism” in which the law assumes that there is no act because what was done, was done involuntarily, with a person behaving in a mechanical fashion.
“The most basic rule of self- defence is that the ‘victim’ can not exceed the force inflicted on him by the ‘attacker’.
“His [Zenani’s] best defence would be to prove non-pathological automatism. However, it is very difficult to prove in a court of law,” Price said.
“This is because automatism relies on a lot of mitigating factors. In this case it could range from the amount of alcohol the student had, [to] the number of times he stabbed the guy or even the way in which the attacker approached him.”