www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-09-30-southafrica-lions_x.htm
Life for South African who fed worker to lions
PHALABORWA, South Africa (AFP) — A judge on Friday sentenced a white South African farmer to life in prison and his black accomplice to 12 years in jail for feeding a black farm worker to lions.
Mark Scott-Crossley was sentenced to life imprisonment for feeding a South African farm worker to lions.
By Siphiwe Sibeko, AP
Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, and laborer Simon Mathebula, 43, were in April found guilty of murdering Nelson Chisale, whose bloodied remains were found in a lion reserve near the famed Kruger National Park.
Judge George Maluleke of the Phalaborwa circuit court sentenced Scott-Crossley to life imprisonment but gave Mathebula 15 years, of which three years were suspended.
The state had called for life imprisonment for both men, citing the exceptionally gruesome nature of the crime that took place on Jan. 31, 2004, near the northeastern city of Hoedspruit.
Scott-Crossley, who minutes earlier had married one of his prison visitors at a nearby courthouse, showed no emotion as the sentence was read out at the hearing.
"We did expect a heavy sentence," Scott-Crossley told journalists following the sentencing. "We are sorry that the family didn't accept our offer of financial compensation. It was not an effort to try and bribe them, but we really feel sorry for them and we are going to fight the sentence."
About 100 people packed in the courtroom cheered and ululated after the sentence was read, while Chisale's niece Fetsang Jafta declared "I'm satisfied with the outcome."
Chisale, 41, had been fired two months earlier for apparently running a personal errand during work hours. When he returned to pick up some belongings, he was beaten with machetes, tied up, driven to a nearby lion reserve, and thrown over the fence.
Farm worker Robert Mnisi, who was accused along with Scott-Crossley and Mathebula but later turned state witness, testified that he heard Chisale scream as the lions devoured his body.
A third accused in the "lion feeding case," Richard Mathebula, who is apparently suffering from tuberculosis, will face trial separately due to ill health.
The start of the sentencing hearing was delayed for 30 minutes on Friday as Scott-Crossley tied the knot with Sim Strydom, whom he met just a few weeks ago when she visited him in prison.
Widely reported in the local press, the "lion trial" highlighted the dire conditions of many black laborers who live on farms in South Africa, more than a decade after the end of apartheid.
But before handing down the sentence, judge Maluleke said his ruling was based on the severity of the crime and not on the presumption that it was a racist killing. "The racial undertones in this case did not play a role in the conviction," he said. "It will also not play a role in the sentencing."
Labor Minister Membathisi Mdladlana had expressed his "shock" and "anger" over the murder while the main labor federation said the killing showed that many farmers treat black workers today as badly as they did during apartheid.
In one particularly brutal incident, a white farmer in eastern South Africa was sentenced to 25 years in 2001 for killing a black employee by tying a rope around his neck and dragging him along a gravel road behind a pick-up truck.