The Gaborone High Court has found Ernest Legwale and Zimbabwean Hamadi Mkhuha guilty of the murder of Thato Meswele in Oodi in September 2015. They will be sentenced on May 30th.
Posted by The Voice Newspaper Botswana on Friday, May 10, 2024
Last Friday, the public heard the shocking details surrounding the death of Thato Meswele, a woman from Oodi, who was attacked on the morning of September 10, 2015, after being mistaken for her elder sister, Dimpho Meswele.
She died of head injuries a few days later at Princess Marina Hospital.
Dimpho’s ex-husband, Ernest Legwale and Hamadi Mkhuha were both convicted of Thato’s murder last Friday and will be sentenced end of May.
Judge Michael Leburu explained that the case relied mostly on circumstantial evidence since the attackers fled the scene before anybody could see their faces.
But the man who knew everything was a witch-doctor, Wellington Mhatiwa, who told the court that Legwale approached him in early 2015 saying he was experiencing marital problems with Dimpho and his mother-in-law, Sediko Meswele, and that they were bewitching him.
He stated that Legwale made it clear that he needed a potent concoction to send the two women to their early graves, and that if the medicine man could not assist, he should then refer him to a more powerful witchdoctor.
Before leaving the healer’s shrine, Legwale asked Mhatiwa to keep his evil intentions a secret.
According to Mhatiwa, he assisted Legwale by giving him a concoction meant to break a spell cast on him by his wife and mother-in-law, but never to kill them.
He charged the accused P800.00 for the services, of which Legwale only paid him P400.00
“The traditional doctor said Legwale was literally crying when he consulted him,” revealed Judge Leburu when delivering his judgment.
Leburu revealed that Mhatiwa said he asked Legwale to bring a pen and two small bottles and advised him to write down all the names of people he wanted to bewitch, and the name list was placed and tightly sealed in the bottles.
“He then asked Legwale to chant the names of persons to be bewitched and in response thereto, Legwale shouted out “Dimpho” and “Sediko”. After the ritual he then advised Legwale to take the muti to the top of the hill and chant the names again,”
A week later Legwale paid another visit to Mhatiwa at his place in Mochudi and Mkhuha was present.
He said that Legwale was very angry at him and told him that the medicine did not work. At the time Legwale and Mkhuha did not know each other.
Seven days later, Legwale visited him and Mkhuha immediately arrived.
He allowed them to talk to each other and after some time they left together.
A week later, Mhatiwa received a call from Legwale requesting for Mkhuha’s cellphone number.
He said that he learned later that Mkhuha had offered to assist Legwale by engaging a South African friend to kill Dimpho and her mother.
The traditional doctor said that a few weeks later, Legwale and Mkhuha visited him in the company of another man with light complexion and well built in stature.
He told the court that sometime in July, Legwale borrowed his Toyota Run X so that he could use it to follow around the persons to be killed, but he refused.
He only learnt about Legwale’s arrest and subsequent release in September 2015.
He said that Legwale visited him and was visibly in panic mood and informed him that the wrong person was killed.
Once again, he warned Mhatiwa not to divulge that information to anybody. He asked Mhatiwa to give him cleansing muti so that he could evade police arrest and he gave him the muti.
He further told the court that prior to the killing he had seen Legwale, Mkhuha and the South African man driving in a red Honda CRV in Mochudi, which belonged to Legwale.
In March 2018, he said, Legwale informed him to flee the country since he was implicated in the murder of Thato Meswele and he ignored the warning since he knew he was innocent.
