The Curious Case of a Cattle Terrorist Who Almost Got Away With it

It read like a horror movie script – the tale of a villain who actually wins in the end. The faceless character would strike at night and leave crimson scenes that were littered with clues that the police could not use. One of his accomplices would get nabbed here or there, but the main actor himself would not reveal himself. The police were getting desperate, as they watched helpless while the areas and people they protected were attacked with impunity by the unknown gang that hit the people hard where it mattered most for village folk – in the kraal.

It got to a point when the rustlers turned so bold that they ransacked kraals like they were their own. One day they raided the homesteads of Kajawo Chingodza and Collen Tope and shepherded two beasts from each of the two men’s pens.

“As per their now trusted method of operation, the seven-member gang targeted mostly oxen, which they knew were docile as they were used to being yoked,” said Asst Stanley Mairi, the Marondera District Intelligence Officer who got entangled in the case early on. “Then they would lead their loot a few kilometres away from their homes, tie their mouths tightly with a piece of wire or the elastic rubber from used bicycle or car tubes. This method was used to suffocate the cattle, which would collapse after some time. After this, killing them would only be a matter of just cutting the throat with a sharp knife, just like slaying a chicken.”

While the other gang members skinned the murdered cattle, the leader would return to the kraal for more cattle. On this particular day, at Suffolk Farm just outside Marondera, the cattle terrorists led four beasts to their slaughter house. They harvested all of the torso and discarded of all the limbs, the head and bones. In their earlier raids, the gang had been notorious for leaving cheeky notes, written on small pieces of paper or on the ground. Police at Mahusekwa remembered a rustling scene they attended where they found the usual chaos they had come to associate with the faceless raiders – the scene of crime was strewn with bones, limbs, a beheaded head, offals, knives and blood; and the cheeks thieves had left a note directed to the cattle owners.

“The not read; “Idyai zvenyu nyama yatasiya; haina poison,”” said the Officer-in-Charge Mahusekwa Police, Inspector Garikai Jiyane.

They did not leave a note when they stole four beats at Suffolk Farm; only a bloody scene with useless clues that the cops had seen before. Only this time, the thieves had overstated their hold over their victims, and understated the power of awareness campaigns by community relations officers.

Said Asst Insp Mairi; “The police officers had long figured that the rustlers had to have some kind of prearranged transport for them to make such quick getaways from crime scenes. So they moved into the communities and impressed upon their people to beware of vehicles patrolling their areas during witch hours.”

It so happened on the fateful April day that a commuter omnibus was spotted around 2am and – because the people resident at the farm had heard of cattle thieves, they instantly organised themselves that very instant and blocked the road ahead of the combi using logs and rocks. After alerting police authorities at Marondera Rural Police Station, then they lay in wait, patiently hoping for their trap to catch some prey. But the combi driver became alert to the danger ahead just as he was about to drive into the barricades, and he swerved out of the mire just in time to make it past the block unscathed.

Or so he and his accomplices thought; because they had not covered enough distance between themselves and their pursuers to ensure their safety when the driver heard the unwelcome clank of one of his tyres puncturing. Sure enough when he got out of his vehicle to inspect, he discovered that the tyre had been pricked by a log as it escaped from the roadblock.

“Naturally, the thieves bolted, abandoning the vehicle and the beef,” narrated the intelligence officer. “When the police and the members of the public arrived where the combi had broken down, they found an empty vehicle – and a lot of beef neatly packed in plastics in large South African shopping bags.”

Their targets had escaped again; the story of the cops’ lives. It was getting light and the cops were returning to base empty handed, when along the way they met a man.

“He said his name was Trymore Bernard and he claimed that he had been robbed of his boss’ combi in Chitungwiza. His description of the vehicle matched the one that had been dumped by the rustlers just a little distance away. It was not lost upon the police that a robbery victim could be found within the vicinity of the vehicle that he claims to have lost the day before in Chitungwiza, some 100km away.”

But the cops played dumpsters along with the ‘victim’s’ story and got the details of where he lived, before they told him they had to conduct a routine search on him. All his pocket valuables – money, nice phone, among others – we very intact and safe in his pockets.

That was when they told him it was time he retold his story and leave out all the creativity about him being robbed and such. The investigators had figured that Bernard saw a chance to make a quick buck when he was approached with an offer to hire his vehicle by the thieves. They figured Bernard knew where exactly they were going, or else he would have said no to such blatant criminality. So the cops told Bernard that they were charging him with stock theft.

So who was he working with?

“The driver told us that he had only been hired to carry some stuff by a man he could only identify as Mhofu, who was travelling with two other men and three women,” Asst Insp Mairi said. “He swore he was not party to the rustling gang.”

Bernard was held in police custody, nonetheless and Marondera Rural police travelled to Chitungwiza in the hunt for their prized man. At least they had a name to begin with, albeit a false one; this was way removed from looking for a faceless, nameless person who always seemed to vanish into thin air after committing atrocities against the national heard. Sadly, the journey to Chitungwiza was going to be an exercise in futility; the police officers did not get much help from the counterparts in Chitungwiza – who had little information about the wanted man – beyond the supply of more man power. They were led to households where he sold his loot, and recovered 84kgs worth of stolen beef, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

“His clients told us that Mhofu would just come and drop the meat at their doorstep, saying he would collect his cash at a later date. Then he would call and ask whether they had his money ready. If they had it, he would knock at their house in literally a matter of five minutes.

“But they had no idea where he lived.”

And while they looked for him in Chitungwiza, Mhofu did not stop his raids on the cattle of Marondera, where he had trained his sights in giving the people of Mahusekwa sleepless nights. One day, an alert member of the Neighbourhood Watch Committee who operates a general store business spotted a taxi parked at Chakadini Business Centre.

“Our source said the car was parked at the shop from around 3pm until eleven at night,” said Insp Jiyane, who police station also monitors activities at the shopping centre. “At first he went alone to enquire if everything was alright with the car and its owner, but the driver brushed him off, saying there was a person he was waiting for at the shops who was running late.”

The NWC member retreated to the haven of his shop, but he was not satisfied by the answer he had got from the man in the car. So he waited a few more minutes before curiosity got the better of him once more; but this time he notified a police officer at a nearby base that there was a suspicious car at the business centre. Together, they approached the vehicle once more, and this time the driver – upon discovering that a police officer had knocked on his door – bolted.

But the clever NWC member had recorded the registration particulars of the car, and they tracked it down through the Central Vehicle Registry. They discovered that the owner of the car was a government employee who had employed a man named Hackson Thomas to drive his taxi. On the day that the car was spotted in Mahusekwa, the owner proved that indeed it was Thomas who was behind the wheel, although he had no clue what he was doing in Mashonaland East at the time his boss thought he was patrolling the streets of Harare, hustling for customers to his taxi.

Luckily the police had the answers – on the morning after the car was spotted, Mahusekwa received two cases of stock theft, and they heard that the same car had had a run-in with members of the pubic as it passed the area around Beatrice, and two women were captured after they failed to escape the chasing mob. But the lucky break that Mahusekwa thought they had found eluded them once again when they received a call to the effect that the women – one of the Virginia Muzanemhano – had escaped police custody.

But Hackson Thomas was accounted for, and he narrated to the cops that Mhofu was one of his trusted clients who would pay him a lot of money for hits like the one organised in Mahusekwa. Naturally, a trap was then set for the capture of Mhofu in his backyard of Chitungwiza - again.

“But the man was clever; that we have to give to him,” admitted Asst Insp Mairi. “He queried Thomas on why he was calling for a job, yet he knew that Mhofu would contact him if something came up. And why was he asking for a rendezvous, when he knew where they always met? Who was he with? But Thomas succeeded in convincing him that he was indeed alone and was just looking to make money, and in the end it was decided that they meet in Zengeza.”

Thomas and one cop went at parked the car at the agreed spot and more police officers stayed on the fringes, monitoring the activities. Sure enough, Mhofu arrived and he opened a door to the passenger seat and stood there for some time while surveying the scene before him. Then he looked inside and discovered that Thomas was not alone in the car.

The chase was on; Mhofu escaped the grasp of the officers inside the car, and turned tail, with the cops hot on his heels. They chased each other around the suburb until the came to a swampy area in Zengeza 4 that was infested with slimy sewerage. There, Mhofu disappeared.

“They searched everywhere in the swamps, and their searches came to naught. But the police officer who led the chasing pack swore that Mhofu had not passed the swamps. Yet they could not locate him.”

Much later, Mhofu would admit to the cops that he just dived into the slimy sewerage and hoped for the best. Until now, he will forever be grateful that the Chitungwiza Town Council have funny ways to taking care of their human waste. But before he hid himself, Mhofu discarded of his two phones, which he feared might ring at the wrong time and flush him out. That was his greatest mistake.

The police picked up the phones, and one of them was a wallpaper of a man whom the police concluded could only be the faceless wanted man. Now they had an alias and a supposed face. It was not long before they found out when they had the right face to the name or not.

Said Asst Insp Mairi. “We received an anonymous call from a person who told us that if we wanted Mhofu that badly, then we might do ourselves a favour and check him out at a house in Dombotombo. Then he hung up.”

Unfortunately, what the caller had not told the cops was that there would be a lot of people at that house since there was the funeral of Mhofu’s sister.”

The sad part was the contingent on stakeout at the Dombotombo house had not been involved with the last chase in Chitungwiza where the cops almost got their man. All day they bit their lip in the hope that Mhofu was indeed at the place and would not leave before the officers who could positively identify him arrived from Mahusekwa. It was also the same officers who had confiscated the wanted man’s phones.

“Our guys from Mahusekwa finally arrived but it was now dark, and the one thing we did not want to do was to ask anybody at the funeral whether Mhofu was present, lest we tip him off and lose him for good. The officers who had chased him in Chitungwiza knew he walked with a limp in his right leg, so we were looking for that tell-tale sign.”

Presently, a man wearing a white jacket stood to mingle with other mourners – and he would have been of no interest to the cops had they not noticed that there was something amiss with his gait. They were convinced that they had their man in perfect sight. But they could not simply walk up to him and identify themselves and ask him accompany them downtown; not with all the people around.

So the police officers waited some more for the perfect moment when Mhofu got alone, and their patience was rewarded around 9pm that night. Their target and two other men left the funeral in the general direction of the shopping centre nearby, and the officers followed at a distance. In no time, Mhofu parted ways with the other two – the police asked not for a moment more.

“Mhofu remained calm when he saw a group officers upon him. When he was asked what his name was, he gave a name very far from the Mhofu we now associated him with. We asked if he was not Mhofu and he said no. did he have some ID on him then? He said yes he had, and if we could remove the cuffs just a bit he would retrieve the ID from the wallet in his pocket.”

Now the police knew they had their man alright. They took out the phone he thought he had lost in Chitungwiza and showed it to his face.

“Mashefu mandibata,” Mhofu said.

And the capture of that man – whose real name is Elson Matambo, a 30-year-old man who hails from Chinyauku Village under Chief Nenguwo  - marked the end of terrorism to the national herd in Marondera. Matambo was jailed 52 years for the two counts of theft he was charged with committing at Suffolk and in Chakadini. His other driver accomplices were also jailed, but Virginia Muzanemhano and other two women identified only as Chihera and Mai Nothando, are still to be accounted for. Muzanenhamo are also wanted for questioning by police in Mvuma and Bindura.

Mhofu and his accomplices are still to face carjacking charges after one of the cars they used in their cattle raids was discovered on be on the Vehicle Theft Squad list as having been stolen at Machipisa Shopping Centre in Harare. But the farmers in Marondera will not care; they are hay that at least their animal wealth can sleep in peace.

“Since the arrest of Mhofu, we have not had a single stock theft case at this station,” said Insp Jiyane.