The Pretoria Magistrates’ Court sentenced a Malawian national Mlotha Nelson Usale, 59, who is also a pastor of Gods Chappel Church, to 10 years direct imprisonment for tempering with essential infrastructure and 8 years each for three counts of fraud worth R150 000.
The court ordered the sentences should run concurrently with that of 10 years. Usale was also declared unfit to possess a firearm.
From 2021 to May 2022, Usale ran a syndicate where he would steal batteries from various network towers of Vodacom and MTN throughout the country, interchange the battery management system of batteries to different manufacturers, respray the casings of the battery in an attempt to disguise the true origins of the batteries to make it look like they were commercial solar batteries.
Thereafter, he would sell the batteries to unsuspecting consumers by placing adverts on social media platforms under a business called Solar Mart and Sun Shop. When an unsuspecting customer purchases a battery, the company would use the services of e-hailing to deliver.
This syndicate was discovered after a complainant bought a battery and it did not work. The complainant then showed the battery to his friend who told him that the battery was a network battery.
The complainant then reported the matter to the police, who in return set a trap which resulted in the arrest of two other Malawian nationals on May 5, 2022, who have since been convicted and sentenced to 8 years each on July 11, 2023.
The two Malawian nationals then took the police to a storage in Midrand where they kept the stolen batteries where police found 53 batteries. Thereafter the two took the police to the places where they sold the batteries. After the arrest of the two, a warrant of arrest was issued for Usale, however, he skipped the country and returned to Malawi. He was eventually arrested on January 25, 2024 at the Beitbridge border attempting to skip the country again.
In court, he pleaded guilty to the charges and offered to pay a fine of R200 000 for the offences. However, the prosecutor Advocate Tholoana Sekhonyana, refused the offer and argued that the offences committed warranted a sentence of direct imprisonment.
Moreover, the crimes committed caused network interruptions and cost the network service providers, MTN and Vodacom a lot of money to replace the stolen batteries. Furthermore, Sekhonyana argued that the people who bought the batteries thinking they were legitimate lost a lot of money because the stolen batteries had since been confiscated. Therefore, the only appropriate sentence was that of direct imprisonment.
When handing down the sentence, the court agreed with the state that the money used to replace the batteries and fix the damage was substantial and the complainants lost a lot of money. Furthermore, the magistrate said Usale wanted to escape prison and lacked consideration for the victims the fact that he asked to pay a fine and not reimburse the victims. “Usale was a guest in South Africa, but he abused his welcome,” it said. Therefore, the magistrate found that a fine was not an appropriate sentence as it would send a wrong message to society.