The Acting Director of Public Prosecution in the Western Cape, Advocate Nicolette Bell, has declined to prosecute Eben and Emile Etzebeth on assault charges laid in 2019.
The National Prosecuting Authority said on Friday that Bell believes “there are no prospects of a successful prosecution against the two men.”
Thirty-two-year-old Emile Etzebeth, the cousin of Springbok rugby player Eben Etzebeth, appeared in the Hopefield Magistrates Court on two counts of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
The charges emanate from an incident that occurred outside a Langebaan establishment in the early hours of the morning on 25 August 2019, where two locals claimed they were assaulted by the Springbok player who also made racial slurs against them.
The NPA said after a protracted investigation, Emile was charged with two counts of assault.
However, the NPA’s Western Cape spokesperson, Eric Ntabazalila, said in evaluating the representations, the prosecution consulted with the two independent witnesses, upon which reliance was placed to institute the prosecution.
“The evaluation revealed that one of the independent witnesses could not identify the assailant who assaulted the two complainants, whilst the initial identification made by the second witness could not, following the consultation, be relied upon to sustain a prosecution,” he said.
Ntabazalila said regarding the complainants themselves, one was unable to identify who his assailant was and in respect of the other, no reliance could be placed on his identification.
He said advocate Bell, considering the onus of proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt, declined to prosecute the Etzebeth cousins.
