Johannesburg: The family of a farm worker who was killed and fed to lions in South Africa reacted with dismay at the weekend after his employer's conviction for murder was quashed on appeal.
Race remains a touchstone issue in South Africa and the killing of Nelson Chisale, 38, provoked widespread revulsion, as well as raising the spectre of the discrimination of apartheid.
Only a few of Chisale's bones and some shredded clothing were recovered at a farm near the Kruger National Park, in the north-east of the country.
Mark Scott-Crossley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005, but the appeal court in Bloemfontein ruled the prosecution had not proved that Chisale, who had been severely beaten, was still alive when he was thrown into a white-lion enclosure.
It said there was a "vast difference" between using lions to dispose of evidence, and as a method of killing, and substituted a conviction for being an accessory to murder after the fact. This cut Scott-Crossley's sentence to five years, and he will be eligible for parole in a few months.
