By Luvuyo Mjekula
The state has asked for lengthy sentences for three men who pleaded guilty and were convicted in a case classified by a senior Makhanda advocate as “evil”.
The three men were found guilty of various charges related to the gruesome killing of two women – Zoleka Gantana, 56, a Kidd’s Beach spaza shop owner and her assistant Kholosa Mpunga, 27, in July last year.
The court heard that five men entered Gantana’s shop on 8 July 2023 and, armed with a firearm, forced the two women on the floor and tied their hands with cable ties.
They assaulted them, ransacked the shop, robbed Gantana of her Isuzu bakkie and R6 000 worth of stock and kidnapped them. They drove the women on the back of the bakkie to a remote farm in the Peddie area. Gantana’s two bank cards were also forcefully taken, and R1 000 was withdrawn from her account.
On arrival on the farm, the women were locked up in an isolated shack. Two days later, they were taken to an area near a river, and both were shot and killed, execution style. Their bodies were burnt in a sandy pit, chopped with a panga into fist-sized pieces and thrown into a nearby river.
While no clear information has been provided about the whereabouts of the fifth suspect, four men – Mandla Qosho, 45, Themba Dingela, 50, Siyanda Makeleni, 50 and Sigagela Mgwatyu, 53, were arrested on different occasions in connection with the shocking killings. Dingela was first to be arrested two days after the incident.
According to court documents, he was nabbed while driving Gantana’s bakkie, and it got stuck in mud. “Passersby suspected it might be the deceased’s bakkie and alerted the police.”
Dingela was arrested, and later, the police also apprehended Qosho and Makeleni, while Mgwatyu was arrested only months later.
Following Dingela’s arrest, a search of the river on the farm ensued, and the remains of the bodies of the women were retrieved and were identified using DNA.
A postmortem was conducted on the remains of the two women, and the cause of death was determined to be a gunshot wound to the head. “The skull remains from both deceased were recovered. The occipital bones had gunshot wounds with internal bevelling of the skull,” read a court document.
Qosho pleaded guilty and was found guilty on two counts of murder, two of robbery with aggravating circumstances, two of kidnapping and each of unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.
Makeleni and Mgwatyu also pleaded guilty and were each convicted on two counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances and two of kidnapping.
Dingela, however, pleaded not guilty to all six counts – two of murder, two of robbery with aggravating circumstances and two of kidnapping. He was not charged with unlawful possession of a firearm or ammunition.
At the state’s request, Judge Ivana Bands separated his case from that of the three and will stand trial separately on a date to be confirmed when he appears again on 16 April.
Addressing the court on sentence on Wednesday, senior state advocate Nickie Turner said there were no substantial and compelling circumstances in favour of Qosho, Makeleni and Mgwatyu.
“Only seriously aggravating circumstances placing this matter at the pinnacle of evil,” Turner said.
She also lambasted the authorities after it emerged that Mgwatyu had been granted special remission of sentence in 2012. Turner said it was “extraordinary” that Mgwatyu was granted special remission of sentence at all. “It makes one believe that the authorities are not serious about protecting society from convicted serious violent criminals.”
She said Mgwatyu’s “impressive” list of previous convictions of serious violent crimes demonstrated he is “a cold-blooded killer”. “He committed this offence while out on parole.”
She asked Bands to sentence Mgwatyu to an effective 25 years’ imprisonment.
Addressing the judge on the interests of society, Turner said the pain and suffering of the two women’s families was palpable – “made more so by the terrible experience of receiving back their loved ones in fist-sized pieces which required [a forensic doctor]to patiently discern which pieces belonged to which deceased – with the assistance of world-class forensic science.”
Family members of the two women had testified in court. Gantana’s daughter, Nobuntu, told the court she was still trying to come to terms with her mother’s painful death. The two-month-long wait to bury her mother added extra trauma to the family. “Rituals such as viewing [the deceased’s]body and dressing it up, we were robbed of this. From our Xhosa cultural perspective – all body parts must be buried in one place. We don’t know if my mother’s body parts were not buried by the Mpunga family.”
She recalled fondly that she had bought her mother the Isuzu bakkie as a birthday present in 2019.
A visibly emotional mother of Kholosa Mpunga also took the stand, and the court had to comfort her numerous times. “My daughter was a nice, quiet person who loved to sing. I still can’t believe she is gone because I never got to see my child,” said the 55-year-old mother.
Turner, meanwhile, called on Bands to impose the prescribed sentences of life imprisonment for murder and 15 years for each robbery with aggravating circumstances, unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.
She also pleaded with the judge to only deviate on the kidnapping counts, from five years to eight years for each, because “the kidnapping was of so serious a nature and was of such long duration.”
The three men are due to be sentenced in the high court in Makhanda tomorrow (Friday).
