By Luvuyo Mjekula
While justice was served in the Makhanda High Court last week, it would not bring back the lives of two women brutally robbed, kidnapped and butchered in July last year.
These were the sentiments of family members of Zoleka Gantana and Kholosa Mpunga outside the high court in Makhanda on Friday.
It was a bittersweet moment for the families who lauded the swift justice but were still battling to come to terms with losing their loved ones.
Struggling to hold back tears, Gantana’s brother, Vuyani, told Grocott’s Mail: “We are grateful that justice was served quickly because most of the time these cases take too long.”
However, Vuyani said the families were not entirely happy. “Whether they are sentenced to life [imprisonment], we can’t bring Zoleka or Kholosa back. To [the perpetrators], going to jail is like going overseas. Maybe after 10 years we will be called because they are either sick or they want to apologise to us.”
He said he and his family members were still mourning his sister.
Gantana, 56, and her newly appointed shop assistant, Mpunga, 27, were attacked by five armed men in Gantana’s spaza shop in East London on 8 July 2023, kidnapped and then shot and killed – execution-style – on a farm in Peddie two days later.
To conceal their crimes, the court heard, some of the perpetrators set the women’s bodies alight before cutting up their remains into fist-sized pieces and tossed them into a nearby river.
Senior state advocate Nickie Turner said the aggravating circumstances in the case were so serious they placed the matter “at the pinnacle of evil”.
The court heard that it took excellent investigative work, including “world-class” forensic science, to identify the body parts and “patiently discern which pieces belonged to which deceased”.
“Of those pieces, two were the occipital skull bone of each deceased, enabling [a forensic specialist]to determine, against all odds, the shocking truth that these two innocent women had been summarily executed with a shot to the back of the head,” Turner told the court during her address on sentence.
Only four of the five men were arrested. Mandla Qosho, Themba Dingela and Siyanda Makeleni were apprehended shortly after the incident, while Sigagela Mgwatyu was only nabbed in January this year.
Qosho, 45, Makeleni, 50, and Mgwatyu, 53, pleaded guilty to various charges, while 50-year-old Dingela pleaded not guilty.
Judge Ivana Bands sentenced the three on Friday.
Qosho was handed an effective life imprisonment. This after Bands ordered that all the sentences in the other counts – the second one of murder, two of robbery with aggravating circumstances, two of kidnapping, one of unlawful possession of a firearm and one of unlawful possession of ammunition, would run concurrently with the one of murder.
Makeleni was sentenced to 15 years for each of two counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances and eight years for each of two counts of kidnapping. The judge ordered that all the sentences would run concurrently, giving Makeleni an effective 15-year jail term.
Parts of Mgwatyu’s sentences on various counts would run concurrently, giving him an effective 20-year sentence.
The court heard that Mgwatyu was out on parole when he committed the latest offences, having been granted special remission of sentence in 2012 until 2025.
In sentencing the three men, Bands said they had not shown remorse after their “senseless” actions.
Meanwhile, Dingela, who pleaded not guilty to charges against him, will return to court in April after the judge ruled that his trial would be separated from the three men’s.
