Facing death: Murder in the valley
Tumelo Mouwane | Friday June 23, 2017 15:06
On Wednesday, attorneys Themba Joina and Archibald Gijima will have to pull off their best efforts of extenuation and mitigation to save two Gantsi farm workers from the death penalty. Before Judge Abednego Tafa in Lobatse, Tshiamo Kgalalelo and Mmika Mpe will know whether they will face the hangman or life in prison.
Yesterday, the two men stood outside the Lobatse High Court chatting with fellow inmates and prison guards with visible relief written on their faces. Arguments for extenuation and mitigation had been due to be held yesterday, but are now due for Wednesday as Judge Tafa was unavailable.
The three-year case, one which has divided the Gantsi farming community, sections of the lower Judiciary and raised the uncomfortable themes of class and race divisions, will come to an end when Tafa hears the arguments and sets a date for his final ruling.
Last month, Tafa found Kgalalelo and Mpe guilty of abduction, robbery, murder, motor vehicle theft and arson in an incident, which rocked the Gantsi farming community and still leaves its marks today.
Kgalalelo and Mpe were found guilty of waylaying and abducting Gantsi businesswoman Reinette Vorster, strangling her to death, robbing her of various valuables and burning her in her vehicle in an incident in the afternoon, evening and night of January 30, 2014. Cash of P11,000 meant for other workers’ salaries and valuables including cellphones, GPS system, DVD players and others were stolen, with the two convicts later leading police to some of the items, stashed away in the Okwa Valley farm where the horror occurred.
A flame in the night
Driving from Gaborone to Gantsi after midnight on January 30, 2014 Batlang Losibe of Kalkfontein could not have imagined that the flame he spotted on the side of the highway would lead to a macabre discovery that traumatised even seasoned law enforcement officials.
A Toyota Hilux Double Cab vehicle was aflame and police after a long search until 0600hrs, would discover a severely charred corpse lying in the backseat, with a metal rod in the front cabin apparently used to jam down the accelerator of the vehicle.
Police attending the scene spotted shoe prints of “people running away” from the scene and later DNA analysis, including the use of samples from parents, would confirm the body as 44-year-old Reinette, a well-known businesswoman in the farming community described as an animal lover and an avid contributor to the community.
The footprints were leading from the drivers’ side of the vehicle to the main road where they disappeared. Even with the shock of the callousness of the incident, events would move very quickly and within days, suspects would be in custody.
A community in shock
Reinette’s husband, Leon, testified that he last spoke to his wife on January 30 when she called to say she would be going to the Okwa Valley farm to pay workers, before returning by 1400hrs to collect the children from school.
Leon, who usually paid the workers, had gone to buy cattle in Ncojane leaving his wife at home.
According to Leon’ testimony, his alarm grew by the hour as by 1600hrs a friend, Jan Daniel Hendrick, called to say Reinette had not returned. By 1900hrs, Hendrick again called to say Reinette was nowhere to be found, whereupon Leon asked that he search in the direction of the farm. By midnight, the friend called again to say Reinette could still not be found, whereupon Leon drove to Okwa Valley and found Kgalalelo’s girlfriend who said her boyfriend and Mpe had gone looking for cattle.
A search of neighbouring farms yielded nothing but at 1300hrs on January 31, police officers arrived with the news no husband or father wants to hear. Unbeknownst to Leon, as he and others searched for Reinette, police were equally searching before making the gruesome discovery 300 metres from the main road on the right hand side of the road facing Kang.
Arrests made and confessions
Throughout their trial, both Kgalalelo and Mpe attempted to obfuscate around the issue of their confessions or whether they had actually led police to any evidence. Their lawyers questioned the various statements given to law enforcement and the conditions under which the statements were given, but ultimately Tafa ruled that “beyond doubt” the two essentially confessed to abducting, murdering and robbing Reinette in that order. The evidence supported the confessions and police’s investigations.
On Friday January 31 2014, Kgalalelo was nabbed at the farm gate, while Mpe, according to evidence led in court, fled the scene after spotting “the lights of the police vehicle shining at a distance”.
Police noted struggle marks near the farmhouse and recovered phones from Kgalalelo’s house. Kgalalelo drove with officers and within the farm, began pointing out stashed items that would later be identified as belonging to Reinette.
Meanwhile, in Werda, events were sharply coming to a head. Mpe, a Werda native, had fled there but at 0700hrs on February 2, two men approached station commander Sergeant Daniel Lentswe and reported that they were looking for Mpe whom they suspected had killed their friend’s wife.
At 1700hrs, Mpe was spotted walking in the direction of his house and arrested. Unknown to police, Mpe had slipped his mother a wallet containing a total of P5,202 just as they pounced. With the mother denying she had been given the money, police were forced to take her to the station for a face-off with her son, a situation broken when Mpe’s brother arrived with the wallet, later testifying his mother had given it to him.
Mpe would be transported to Gantsi to face the music.
A community divided
The farming community in and around Gantsi has traditionally had simmering racial tensions with black farmworkers, many from the minority Basarwa tribes, complaining of slavery-type conditions on the farms owned mainly by Afrikaners. Workers live, work, play and die on the farms, often paid in cash and kind and living in compounds where labour inspections are few and far between.
Kgalalelo and Mpe, when arrested were quick to play on these tensions, claiming they had been subjected to near slavery and had hit out in an attempt to only rob Reinette, before the situation got out of control.
“At the farm, we are not treated well. Even payments we are paid after sometime. We then ended up deciding the take the boer lady and rob her money (sic),” saidKgalalelo in an initial statement before former magistrate Thabo Malambane on February 4, 2014.
He further testified that: “I used to complain about the money I was being paid and also the work load. We were doing a lot. There was no break. We worked continuously throughout the year.”
Kgalalelo testified that on the day of the incident, he had expected Leon to come and grant him leave. He claimed the sequence of events leading to Reinette’s death started with a quarrel over his demands to be released for leave.
The duo’s lawyers said their clients were “kept and treated like slaves” and that Reinette “harassed and abused them”.
These allegations and the attempt to whip up divisions were however squashed in court. Firstly, it was proved that Kgalalelo was earning P1,100 per month and groceries worth P250 per month, while Mpe was earning P500 per month with the same value of groceries.
The two lived alone on the Okwa Valley farm and could have easily left if they believed they were being mistreated. Instead, they remained of their own free will and at no point had they raised proof of ill-treatment or grievances.
Kgalalelo, meanwhile, testified that from his salary, he used P700 for food and would only be left with P400.
“When I complained about the money, he (Leon) said it was enough. He would not increase it.
“We quarrelled, I told him I wanted to leave. He convinced me not to leave, telling me he would increase my salary. He however did not increase it, but I continued working for him.”
Judge Tafa was clearly not swayed by Kgalalelo and Mpe’s attempts to paint their crimes as influenced by abuse or harassment. Responding to Leon’ testimony on the working conditions, salaries and relationship with the convicts, Tafa said he believed the farmer over the farm hands.
“I believe this witness (Leon). His evidence respecting the relationship between the accused persons and himself was corroborated by Kgalalelo’s girlfriend who testified that they were treated and paid well,” Tafa said in his extensive 109-page judgement.
A magistrate resigns
Even with the allegations of ill-treatment squashed later in trial, early in the case, community divisions threatened to take centre stage. Magistrate Malambane, who presided over the initial stages of the case and took Kgalalelo’s statement, granted bail to the two suspects igniting furore in the community. A lawyer representing the Vorster family took to the media blasting the decision. When a stocktheft case involving Kgalalelo and Mpe was transferred away from Malambane to Gaborone, Malambane, in an action uncharacteristic of magistrates, gave media interviews saying the move was linked to his unpopular decision to grant the duo bail.
In February 2014, Malambane boycotted presiding over cases, again talking to the media, and by April was jobless after being fired for refusing the acting Chief Justice’s order to resume presiding over cases.
The magistrate would later tell a weekly newspaper that his superiors had squeezed him on his decision to grant bail to the two farm hands.
“As a magistrate, I took an oath to perform my judicial duties without fear or favour and as such I had to protest when I feared my job was being interfered with by my supervisors,” he was reported as saying.
End game approaches
Three years after Kgalalelo and Mpe hatched their murderous scheme, Tafa holds their fates in his hands. Experts close to the case expect that this Wednesday, Gijima and Joina will make impassioned pleas for their clients’ lives. They may even call witnesses and ask them to testify.
Wednesday is all about extenuation and mitigation.
“When you are convicted for murder, you have to extenuate to convince the court that you do not deserve the death penalty,” one legal expert said.
“Extenuation is to advance arguments to reduce your moral blameworthiness and convince the court not to impose the death penalty. You advance reasons why they should not impose death.
“The law says if you kill, you are killed, and extenuation is to say ‘because of this and that factors, I don’t deserve to be hanged’.
“Mitigation is about the factors that the court should look at in sentencing according to three principles being the offence, the offender and the interest of society. You balance all these.
“Extenuation is only about the culprit and not the crime. It is about circumstances that are unique to the culprit.”
Typically Judges take their time to decide on extenuation and mitigation in death penalty cases. A month, perhaps two or more and Tafa will have his ruling ready.
For the Vorsters, the tragic tale of a precious life lost will be closer to its final chapter.