Conviction Witchcraft- and sorcery-accusation violence Killing or assault after a witchcraft or sorcery accusation Aliwal North, Eastern Cape, South Africa · 2012

S v Latha: murder convictions after an accusation of bewitching relatives

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Disposition and response

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Appellate history

No later appellate disposition was located in the July 2026 source audit.

Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

adult relatives making a witchcraft accusation, older cousin who persuaded a second participant

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The defendants' admitted account tied the killing to a belief that their grandmother had bewitched family members, caused illness and death, and posed an ongoing supernatural threat. The court convicted both defendants not only of murder but also of the statutory offense of imputing supernatural harm or naming another person as a witch.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2012-05-09 · guilty pleas, convictions and sentencing

High Court of South Africa, Eastern Cape Division at Grahamstown, S v Latha and Another, CC 20/12. The court convicted Bulelani Latha and Ayanda Gqongwa of murder and contravening the Witchcraft Suppression Act; Gqongwa was also convicted of common assault. Latha received twenty years for murder with five years suspended and a concurrent eighteen months for the statutory offense. Gqongwa received fifteen years for murder with five years suspended, plus concurrent terms of three months and twelve months on the other counts.

Documented coercion mechanisms

witchcraft accusation
blame for illness and death
family persuasion
claimed supernatural threat

Cited record

Sources

high court judgment conviction and sentencing judgment High Court of South Africa, Eastern Cape Division, S v Latha and Another (CC 20/12) [2012] ZAECGHC 29; 2012 (2) SACR 30 (ECG) (May 9, 2012).: The sentencing judgment records the guilty pleas, admitted witchcraft accusations, family relationship, murder and statutory convictions, individual roles, mitigation analysis and exact sentences for both defendants.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAECGHC/2012/29.html Corpus classification: high-court-judgment; evidentiary role: conviction-and-sentencing-judgment. SHA-256 b0989fe6d78b8485ea8f7e53acb7bddd06bfe03baeaf210f25c965f8dc6917d6
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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