News24 | More charges for Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala and co-accused

Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala and his wife, Tsakani, in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

• Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala was back in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
• He is charged in connection with the 2023 attempted murder of his former lover, Tebogo Thobejane.
• The court heard the State was planning to centralise additional cases against him and his co-accused.

More charges are coming for attempted murder accused Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala - the controversial businessman at the centre of the scandal surrounding KwaZulu-Natal top cop, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, and Police Minister Senzo Mchunu - and his co-accused.

On Friday, Matlala and the three co-accused returned to the dock of Alexandra Magistrate’s Court, where they are charged with a 2023 attempt on the life of Matlala’s former lover, socialite Tebogo Thobejane.

During proceedings, the State revealed that it was planning on centralising two other cases: one from Pretoria West and another from Lyttelton.

The case was postponed to August for that purpose.

Matlala was arrested in May this year. He is in the dock alongside Tlego Floyd Mabusela and Musa Kekana, who were charged in March, and his wife, Tsakani Matlala, who was arrested shortly after him.

At an explosive press briefing in Durban on Sunday, Mkhwanazi placed Matlala at the centre of allegations that the criminal justice system - including the police, prosecuting authorities and the judiciary - had been captured by drug cartels and businesspeople.

Mkhwanazi claimed Matlala, who scored a R360 million police health tender in June last year, despite being under investigation in connection with the Tembisa Hospital graft scandal, was bankrolling Mchunu and the mysterious Brown Mogotsi.

He also claimed that Mchunu and Mogotsi were closer than the former had admitted to in Parliament earlier this year, when he flatly denied knowing him.

Mkhwanazi charged further that his Political Killings Task Team had been disbanded on the back of political meddling after the unit became involved in investigations into the April 2024 murder of Vaal engineer Armand Swart.

READ | 9 LIVES: How the ‘Cat’ captured the heart of the SAPS

Swart was gunned down outside his place of work after the firm he worked for blew the whistle on allegations of price gouging involving a Transnet tender. Alleged guns for hire, Mabusela and Kekana, are also among the accused in that matter, along with Sandton businessman Katiso Molefe.

Mkhwanazi revealed on Sunday that despite, having originally been denied bail by the Vereeniging Regional Court, Molefe later had the decision overturned on appeal.

The fallout has been massive, with public protests and a parliamentary inquiry, a Public Protector probe and an address from President Cyril Ramaphosa now looming.

Against this backdrop, Matlala and his co-accused emerged from the grills on Friday to a throng of media.

The events at the heart of the current case date back to Sandton in October 2023, when gunmen pulled up alongside a car Thobejane was in and opened fire. She and a companion were seated at the back of the car while her driver was behind the wheel. All three ultimately survived, but Thobejane’s companion was paralysed.

Docket

On Friday, the court further heard an application from Matlala for access to Sections B and C of the docket.

Matlala previously abandoned bail but it appears he is planning to lodge an application in the future and his advocate, Christo Meiring, told the court that “initially, there was a bail statement filed or made available to the State”.

Meiring submitted:

He said Matlala’s legal team had received Section A of the docket from the State but that “when [they] compared that to what had been said by one of the investigating officers in her affidavit, [they] realised there’s a lot of information contained in there that doesn’t form part of Section A”.

This included cellphone records and bank statements.

The State opposed the application and indicated that the information in question had been secured while following up “on certain averments by [Matlala] in his bail affidavit”.

“The fact of the matter is those documents were obtained purely for the bail application … It’s not even filed in B and C,” said the State advocate, whose identity cannot be published.

Regardless, they indicated the State was willing to share a number of the documents in question and the application was ultimately dismissed, with the magistrate urging the parties to “speak to each other”.

READ | Cellphone seized from Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala could lead to broader network - expert

The case was postponed to 26 August.

In the meantime, Matlala remains in custody, and his wife is out on R20 000 bail.

Mabusela and Kekana were released on a warning in the current matter but were denied bail in the Vereeniging matter, so they are in prison.