Two sons of former Alfred Duma Municipality mayor Vincent Madlala and two co-accused have been found guilty of murdering three people in a hail of bullets in KwaZulu-Natal in 2020.
Sandile Madlala, 33, Sabelo Madlala, 28, Lethukuthula Khumalo and Thabiso Nkosi were convicted in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg after a trial that examined two very different versions of what happened on the night of the killings.
The four accused claimed that the victims had been killed in a drive-by shooting. But the court rejected that account after hearing ballistic evidence that indicated the shots came from two stationary gunmen positioned on either side of the vehicle carrying the victims.
The men were convicted on Thursday but remain free on bail until their sentencing hearing on 3 December. Their bail was extended after the conviction, allowing them to return home while they await the next stage of the case.
The verdict followed a judgment delivered over four days by Judge Elsje-Marie Bezuidenhout. The four men were tried for the murders of Mxolisi Mncedisi Dladla, his girlfriend Nompumelelo Thwala and Nhlanhla Fortune Zulu.
The victims died after being shot repeatedly in an attack that prosecutors argued was not a random drive-by assault. The court heard that the four accused and the three deceased had been socialising together before the shooting.
They were travelling home in two vehicles, a Volkswagen Polo and a BMW. The BMW broke down and was being towed with a rope when the fatal shooting happened.
The Madlala brothers told police that a Toyota Etios had driven alongside them. According to their version, the windows of the Etios were rolled down and gunfire erupted without the vehicle stopping.
That account became central to the trial. If the shooting had happened from a moving vehicle, it could have supported the defence version that the victims had been attacked by unknown people passing by. But the ballistic evidence presented in court pointed to a different sequence.
A ballistics expert told the court that it was impossible for the three deceased people to have died in a drive-by shooting. The evidence indicated that two shooters had been positioned on opposite sides of the Polo and had fired from stationary positions.
Spent cartridges found at the scene helped investigators determine where the shooters had been standing. The location of the cartridges did not match the account of gunmen firing from a moving Toyota Etios.
The court also heard that the BMW had 12 bullet holes in its rear. According to the evidence, the pattern of the bullet holes showed that the shots had been fired from a stationary position, further contradicting the drive-by version.
The ballistic findings became one of the most important parts of the State’s case. They challenged the explanation put forward by the Madlala brothers and supported the prosecution’s argument that the attack had taken place while the vehicles were stationary.
Five other witnesses testified during the trial. They were led by KwaZulu-Natal Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, advocate Lawrence Gcaba.
The witnesses told the court that the BMW was in the parking lot of an electronics company when gunfire rang out at the murder scene. Their evidence was considered alongside the cartridge locations, the damage to the vehicles and the expert assessment of the shooting.
In convicting the four accused, Bezuidenhout considered the State’s evidence and the decision by the accused not to testify. The defence closed its case without calling witnesses and none of the four men took the stand.
The judge observed that the State’s evidence had been left uncontested because the accused chose not to testify and therefore amounted to conclusive proof, according to the court’s judgment.
Bezuidenhout found that the four men had acted in common purpose. In simple terms, this meant the court found that they shared a common criminal plan and could each be held responsible for the murders.
The finding is important because a person does not necessarily have to fire the fatal shot to be held liable for a crime committed by a group acting together. The State had to prove the connection between the accused men and the killings, and the court concluded that the evidence established their common purpose.
The judge also noted that the accused had given different accounts in their witness statements and during their bail application. However, they did not present a version from the witness box during the trial.
Bezuidenhout noted that cross-examination by a defence lawyer does not amount to an accused person’s own version. Without testimony from the accused, the court assessed the State’s evidence against the accounts already placed before it and the physical evidence from the shooting scene.
The convictions bring an end to the trial phase, but the case is not yet complete. The four men will return to court on 3 December for sentencing. The court will then consider the seriousness of the murders, the circumstances of the accused, their personal backgrounds and any other relevant factors before deciding the punishment.
The men remain on bail until that hearing. Being convicted means the court has found them guilty, but sentencing has not yet taken place. The State may ask for substantial prison terms, while the defence is likely to present factors it believes should be considered before sentence is imposed.
The case also has a wider political connection because two of the accused are the sons of Vincent Madlala, a former mayor of the Alfred Duma Municipality. Madlala later left the ANC and joined the MK Party.
The former mayor became involved in a separate police investigation in 2021. He was arrested after allegedly refusing to allow the Political Killings Task Team to enter his home to arrest his sons. Police eventually removed his electric gate from its track to gain entry.
Six firearms were found in a safe inside his daughter’s bedroom during that operation. The matter against Madlala and his daughter remains pending in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court.
That separate case has not determined the outcome of the triple-murder trial. The convictions of the two brothers and their co-accused were based on the evidence presented in the High Court, including the ballistic findings, witness testimony and the court’s assessment of their different accounts.
The triple murder has left the families of Dladla, Thwala and Zulu waiting for justice since 2020. The victims had been socialising before the attack, and their deaths turned a journey home into a crime scene.
For the families, the convictions may provide some relief, but the upcoming sentencing hearing will be another difficult day. They will have to hear arguments about punishment while remembering the people who were killed.
The case also highlights the importance of physical evidence in murder investigations. The court did not rely only on competing statements. It examined the position of the vehicles, the bullet holes, the spent cartridges and the expert evidence about the direction from which the shots were fired.
That evidence allowed the court to test the drive-by account against the scene itself. The ballistic findings ultimately showed that the shooting could not have happened in the way described by the accused.
The four men are now awaiting sentencing under a conviction for three murders. They remain free on bail for the moment, but their future will be decided when they return to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on 3 December.
Until then, the court’s finding is clear: the drive-by shooting version was rejected, the four accused were found to have acted in common purpose and they were convicted of killing three people in a planned attack carried out from stationary positions.