A white South African farmer and one of his employees were convicted today of murdering a former black co-worker and feeding him to lions.
Investigators found little more than a skull, a few bones and a finger last year in the enclosure for rare white lions in northern Limpopo province, where the murder took place.
Judge George Maluleke passed the guilty verdict against farmer Mark Scott-Crossley and worker Simon Mathebula, who had both denied killing 41-year-old former employee Nelson Chisale, the SAPA news agency reported.
Mathebula's brother, Richard, was also accused of the murder but his trial will be conducted separately after he was admitted to hospital with tuberculosis.
Scott-Crossley admitted during the trial he told his workers to "sort out" Chisale after he returned to the farm to fetch his belongings, but said he then merely helped them dispose of the body after they had killed Chisale in his absence.
The post-mortem gave Chisale's cause of death as "being mauled by lions".
The case had sparked outrage in South Africa, where some white farmers are still accused of abusing black workers more than a decade after the end of apartheid.
