Wellington Kachidza, a Zimbabwean national, was sentenced by the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in February 2022 for a run of offenses committed in and around the city between January 2018 and December 2019. He pleaded guilty to 34 counts: murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion, robbery with aggravating circumstances and a contravention of the Immigration Act. The State's case was that men were taken, that money was demanded from their families, and that they were killed afterwards. Three women were the complainants on the rape counts.
Judge Hennie de Vos imposed life imprisonment on the murder counts, 15 years on each of eight counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances, 10 years on each of three counts of rape, 5 years on each of eight counts of kidnapping, a further 5 years on the extortion counts and 2 years for the Immigration Act offense. The National Prosecuting Authority announced the result as six life terms and 192 years' imprisonment. Kachidza was 28. He had been in custody since January 2020, and the court was told he had spent 26 months awaiting the end of the case.
Kachidza was 28 when he was sentenced. He told the court that he came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2014. The judge found that he had entered the country unlawfully, and he was convicted of contravening the Immigration Act.
The charge sheet covered two years. The State said Kachidza committed ten violent offenses between January 2018 and December 2019 in and around Pretoria, a count that left out the immigration charge. Eight kidnappings, eight extortions and eight counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances ran alongside the murder counts. The prosecutor, Advocate Pieter Coetzer, told the court that greed was the motive and that the killings were brutal.
The families of the men who died were contacted and money was demanded from them, in amounts named in court of between R2,000 and R5,000.
Three of the men are known by name: Steven Moses Mageza, Rendani Maphiri and Tebatso Mogoathlo, who died on November 25, 2019. The offenses were committed in Pretoria, in the Tshwane district of Gauteng province.
Three women were the complainants on the three counts of rape. The prosecutor argued that the offenses had a severe effect on them, and on the families of the dead.
Kachidza was arrested on January 15, 2020 in an intelligence-driven operation by the South African Police Service. Evidence linked him to the three rape counts. He remained in custody from that date until sentence, a period the court put at 26 months, which included repeated postponements.
The case was heard in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, where the State charged him with murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion and robbery with aggravating circumstances, together with the immigration offense. On February 17, 2022 he submitted a plea explanation and pleaded guilty. The plea was entered under a plea agreement, which the court accepted, and he was found guilty. The matter was postponed to Tuesday, February 22, 2022, for the State and the defense to address the court on sentence.
On February 22, 2022 Kachidza gave the court his account of the offenses. Mitigation followed on Wednesday, February 23. His counsel put forward that he was a first offender, that he had pleaded guilty, and that he had apologized to the families and said he never meant to commit the crimes. He also relied on the time already spent in custody.
Judge de Vos found no real remorse. He said that the guilty plea carried little weight, given the strength of the State's case. The judge said that the court's responsibility extended beyond South Africans to the world when explaining the severity of the sentence.
Life imprisonment was imposed on the murder counts, with 15 years on each of the eight robbery counts, 10 years on each of the three rape counts, 5 years on each of the eight kidnapping counts, 5 years on the extortion counts and 2 years under the Immigration Act. The National Prosecuting Authority's Pretoria spokesperson, Lumka Mahanjana, announced the result as six life terms and 192 years' imprisonment. The Director of Public Prosecutions for the North Gauteng division, Advocate Sibongile Mzinyathi, said the sentence reminded the community that such crimes would be prosecuted, and he praised the investigating team of the police.
South Africa has no death penalty. On June 6, 1995 the Constitutional Court held in S v Makwanyane that capital punishment was unconstitutional, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 105 of 1997 supplied the mechanism for converting existing death sentences. The same Act, which came into force on December 19, 1997 and is commonly called the minimum sentences legislation, fixes life imprisonment as the sentence a High Court must impose for murder in certain circumstances, among them murder committed in the course of rape or robbery or after planning, unless the court finds substantial and compelling circumstances that justify a lesser sentence.
The Supreme Court of Appeal explained how that test works in S v Malgas in March 2001: the legislature's benchmark is the ordinary response, and a court departs from it only where the prescribed sentence would be disproportionate to the crime, the offender and the needs of society. Under section 73(6)(b)(iv) of the Correctional Services Act, a person serving life may not be placed on parole until he has served at least 25 years of the sentence, and a prisoner aged 65 may be considered after 15 years.
Kachidza's statement through his counsel that he never meant to commit the crimes was weighed against the judge's finding that he showed no real remorse, and the explanations he offered in mitigation were rejected.
2014: Kachidza comes to South Africa from Zimbabwe.
January 2018 to December 2019: the offenses charged in and around Pretoria take place.
November 25, 2019: the date given for the death of Tebatso Mogoathlo.
January 15, 2020: Kachidza is arrested in an intelligence-driven operation.
February 17, 2022: he submits a plea explanation and pleads guilty; the court accepts the plea agreement.
February 22, 2022: the sentencing hearing begins; he gives an account to the court.
February 23, 2022: mitigation is heard and Judge Hennie de Vos sentences him to life imprisonment on the murder counts, with further terms on the other counts.
February 25, 2022: the prosecuting authority's announcement of six life terms and 192 years' imprisonment is published.