Johannesburg - Two of the three murderers of German supercar specialist Uwe Gemballa received lengthy prison sentences for the brutal killing, but Gemballa’s family are still battling to recover from his loss.
On Tuesday, Thabo Mohapi and Garland Holworthy were sentenced in the high court sitting at Palm Ridge for Gemballa’s kidnapping and murder, while police continue the hunt for Kagiso Ledwaba, who escaped custody Monday last week.
While the Gemballa family have remained mostly silent since 2010, when Gemballa was wrapped in duct tape, suffocated and left in a shallow grave in Pretoria, on Tuesday a victim impact statement showed the family had been all but ruined since his death.
Gemballa’s wife Christiane explained in the statement that because of media reports claiming her husband had been associating with South African underworld figures, particularly Radovan Krejcir, creditors had pulled out of their successful car business. Without Gemballa to help, the business went bankrupt and the family were penniless.
The anxiety surrounding his kidnapping had left Christiane and her then 16-year-old son traumatised. “The manner of his death was particularly brutal and I shudder to think about his last moments on earth,” she wrote.
“The murderers did not only take my husband’s life, but they also destroyed his beloved family’s lives in a most conclussive manner with their devastating crime... I ask that the courts show my husband’s murderers no mercy, as was the case with them and my husband.”
She added the caveat that mercy should be shown only if one of them was willing to explain why her husband had been killed.
The prosecution, headed by advocate Riegel du Toit, indicated concern during closing arguments that Mohapi, who has already been sentenced to 34 years in prison on other armed robbery charges, would not be punished harshly enough for Gemballa’s murder. Du Toit explained that if Judge George Maluleke’s sentencing of Mohapi ran concurrently with his existing 34-year sentence, a further life sentence - the equivalent of 25 years in prison - would mean no extra time behind bars.
But in a shrewd move,the judge ordered that Mohapi be sentenced to 25 years for the kidnapping and murder, with 10 of those years running concurrently with his current 34-year sentence. What this means is an overall sentence of 49 years for all of Mohapi’s crimes, meaning he would be eligible to apply for parole only in about 33 years.
Holworthy was sentenced to 25 years in prison: 25 years for the murder, with a five-year sentence for the kidnapping and two-year sentence for theft of Gemballa’s belongings, both running concurrently with the murder sentence.
In his judgment, Judge Maluleke said it was a “terrible irony” that Mohapi’s previous crimes had meant he would serve less time in prison specifically for Gemballa’s murder than his co-accused would, but that it could not be helped. He also noted that because the crime was committed on a foreign national just before the World Cup in 2010, there was no way to calculate the financial damage the killing had done to South Africa’s economy.
The two men indicated they would appeal and appeared unfazed, with Mohapi shouting: “The battle is not over.”
The Star