Bongani Paulos (25) of Aliwal-North who has been found guilty of the murder of the Anglican priest Clive Newman tearfully apologised to the reverend’s family this week.
Bongani Paulos (25) of Aliwal-North who has been found guilty of the murder of the Anglican priest Clive Newman tearfully apologised to the reverend’s family this week.
He told the family it was not his intention to kill Newman and that he "regrets going to Grahamstown on that day."
Paulos made his first appearance in the Grahamstown Magistrate’s Court on Monday where the trial was pushed forward to the city’s High Court. On Tuesday, Paulos pleaded guilty to the murder of Newman and theft of his possessions, including his car. The Honourable Judge Clive Plasket found him guilty on both charges.
The 45 year-old reverend and lecturer was clubbed to death in his room at the Anglican College of the Transfiguration on the weekend of 7 November. The cause of death, as stated in the post mortem report, was said to be blunt force with lacerations to the scalp and brain as well as skull fractures.
In his plea, Paulos said he was hitchhiking to Aliwal North from Cape Town seeking employment. He said Newman had picked him up in Colchester and driven to Grahamstown, explaining to him that he would be able to hitchhike to Aliwal North via Queenstown. They arrived in Grahamstown "late in the day" and Newman offered Paulos food and a place to stay. He accepted the offer as he "was hungry and had no place to stay".
Paulos said that Newman then explained that "he only had one bed but that he does not mind to share it with me." Paulos then described how Newman made "sexual advances several times" throughout the night but "I stopped him every time. I felt repulsed, but I had nowhere to go".
The following morning, Newman took Paulos out of town and dropped him on the road to Fort Beaufort.
However, when he failed to get a lift, he returned to the Newman’s house. When asked by Malherbe Marais, the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions why he went back to Newman’s place, he said that at the time he did not know anyone else in Grahamstown. He also told the court that he thought the situation would change as Newman had been acting "different and friendly at the hiking spot so I thought he wouldn’t do the same things again."
He went on to relate that: "As we got into bed, he again took off his underwear. He started to touch my bottocks again, I pushed him back, he told me to relax. He then moved closer to me in the bed once more… and I jumped up and sat on the side of the bed… and I said I don’t like a man to touch me like that."
The following morning, Newman asked Paulos to massage his shoulders which he did. Then Newman asked him to massage "lower down his back". Paulos said he got very angry when he realised where this was leading to and "went to fetch a knopkierie… and I hit him over the head". He then wiped the kierie and left it behind a cupboard in the room. He took the keys to Newman’s Hyundai Tucson, a laptop with an external hard drive, a cellphone, some cash, binoculars and a box of wine and left.
Paulos was arrested in Vanderbijl Park three weeks after the incident. Newman’s family broke down in court as Paulos- with his head in his hands- gave details of the events that led up to the murder. Paulos was represented by attorney Alan de Jager from the Grahamstown branch of Legal Aid.
Newman was attacked by a gay couple in his car in Bluewater Bay 18 years ago. His throat was slit and one of his vocal chords was severed, impairing his speech. His testimony helped convict Antonie Wessels (31) and 16-year-old Jean Havenga who were responsible for killings across the country. He was the pair’s fourth and final victim and was the only one who survived. Newman was a businessman in Port Elizabeth at the time.
When the articulate and multilingual Paulos was asked about his family, he sobbed, telling the court how he and his younger brother were sent to a foster home because his mother was working in Johannesburg. He passed matric in 2002 at Amasango Career School in Aliwal North and went on to do Business Studies for two years at Ikhala Further Education Training College.
His mother passed away in December 2002 and he said he had never met his father. Paulos is married with two daughters, who are five and two years old. His attorney, De Jager described the incident as having a "great similarity with spousal abuse that lead to the death of one partner where the person goes back to the same bedroom, for the same abuse until they snap." Marais said it is a "rare case where the accused appears in the district court and asks to be transferred to the High Court on his first appearance".
De Jager argued that pleading guilty and "the fact that he is a first offender and that he took full responsibility for the incident makes him an excellent candidate for rehabilitation," while Marais said the accused "professes remorse but it took a trial to extract it" and that there is no evidence that he pleaded guilty to make a "clean breast of it."
De Jager said the case had been presented in such a way that the court would find that "substantial and compelling circumstances… justifies a lesser sentence". Marais said he expected a sentence in the range of 15 years. Sentencing will be handed down in the Grahamstown High Court on Monday 7 December at 10am.
