“If You No Longer Love Her, Walk Away”: High Court Judge Says on Crimes of Passion

Gweru - The murder trial of Brighton Kadhlanga was never merely about the death of one woman in a remote village outside Gweru. At its centre stood a deeply disturbing question that  Senior Bulawayo High Court Judge, Justice Munamato Mutevedzi would later confront head-on inside a tense Gweru High Court Circuit  Court courtroom as to why do some men believe suspicion, jealousy or alleged infidelity gives them the right to kill?

For Brighton Kadhlanga, the answer appeared simple. He believed his wife, 26-year-old Patience Madula, had been unfaithful and cheating with a man of the cloth.

For the court, however, that explanation carried absolutely no moral or legal justification.

“No one kills the person they love,” Justice Mutevedzi declared during a hard-hitting sentencing judgment that turned the courtroom into a national reflection on domestic violence, toxic possessiveness and the collapse of humanity within marriage.

“If a man no longer loves a woman, he must not kill her, but simply walk away.”

Those words became the moral centrepiece of a case that exposed both the brutality of intimate partner violence and the judiciary’s growing determination to confront it without compromise.

The tragedy unfolded on the night of December 20, 2025, inside a modest kitchen hut at Chinyama Village under Chief Gambiza in Gweru.

According to evidence presented before the High Court, Kadhlanga returned home from Maguma Business Centre visibly agitated and immediately accused his wife of having extra-marital affairs.

The accusations quickly escalated into threats.

The court heard that he declared his intention to kill both his wife and their two-year-old son before taking his own life.

His own mother, Vimbai Zhova, sensed the seriousness in his voice.

Terrified, she grabbed the toddler and fled into the darkness to seek refuge at a nearby homestead.

That split-second decision likely prevented an even greater tragedy.

Inside the kitchen hut, Patience Madula remained alone with her husband.

What followed, veteran prosecutor Thompson Hove argued, was not an impulsive act of temporary anger but a calculated eruption of violence fuelled by obsession, suspicion and wounded male pride.

Kadhlanga allegedly picked up a burning log from the fireplace and repeatedly assaulted his wife before escalating the attack with a heavy three-legged aluminium cooking pot.

The injuries were horrific, deep cuts to the head, wounds on the legs, bruises covering her body and massive brain trauma.

Later that night, the accused allegedly telephoned the deceased’s brother, Irvine Madula, and chillingly announced that he wanted to kill his sister because she was cheating on him.

When Irvine finally managed to speak to his sister, she reportedly told him she had been “seriously assaulted” and could no longer walk.

By the time relatives and police officers arrived shortly after midnight, Patience Madula was already dead.

She lay face down in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.

The Judge Rejects the “Crime of Passion” Narrative.

Inside Courtroom 1, the defence attempted to portray Kadhlanga as a deeply troubled young man emotionally overwhelmed by suspicions of infidelity.

But Justice Mutevedzi dismantled that argument piece by piece.

The judge rejected the suggestion that Kadhlanga acted spontaneously in the heat of passion.

Instead, he concluded that the murder was premeditated.

“There is little doubt, if any, that the offence was aggravated,” the judge ruled.

“The offender was far from being a man in a momentarily uncontrollable emotional outburst. It was something which the offender had agonised over for some time. He simply waited for the opportune moment.”

That finding became critical to the sentence.

The court noted that the threats against both the deceased and the child were made before the assault even began, proof, according to the judge, of deliberate intent and calculated hostility.

Justice Mutevedzi observed that the accused had already mentally prepared himself for violence long before he picked up the weapons.

The judge painted the picture of a man who had emotionally normalised murder in his mind.

Even more disturbing to the court, he said, was the threat directed at the couple’s two-year-old son.

Justice Mutevedzi revealed that the accused allegedly intended to smash the child against a wall.

“To him, the child was the easiest target,” the judge remarked.

Had the child’s grandmother not fled with him moments earlier, the judge warned, the country could have witnessed “a double, if not a triple murder.”

As the sentencing judgment unfolded, it evolved into something far larger than a legal decision.

It became a forceful judicial condemnation of possessiveness disguised as love.

Justice Mutevedzi openly challenged the dangerous thinking that men own women or have authority over their lives and deaths.

Some men kill claiming undying love, the judge observed, others kill because they no longer love their partners.

“But neither of the two scenarios makes any sense,” he said, “That paradox is unimaginable.”

The courtroom remained silent as the judge argued that separation, not violence,  is the lawful and humane response to broken relationships.

“To any right-thinking person, walking away is not only the easier way out, but also the smartest,” he said.

His words resonated beyond the courtroom walls into a society increasingly grappling with domestic killings driven by jealousy and control.

Justice Mutevedzi reserved some of his strongest criticism for violence committed within marriage itself.

He described domestic murder as inherently aggravated because it destroys the very foundation upon which families are built, trust, safety and protection.

“There is no better sanctuary for those in marriage than their spouses and their homes,” the judge ruled.

“When one is killed by the person expected to protect them, the marriage institution ceases to have meaning.”

The judge said the killing was not a single impulsive strike delivered in anger.

Rather, it was “gratuitous violence” — sustained, deliberate and merciless.

Medical evidence from pathologist Dr Maibelys Gavilan Acosta confirmed the severity of the assault.

The deceased suffered brain injury, subarachnoid haemorrhage and severe head trauma.

The court also heard evidence from police officers who described finding the body lying in blood with deep wounds and visible bruising.

Throughout the proceedings, prosecutor Thompson Hove presented what courtroom observers regarded as a disciplined and highly logical prosecution narrative.

Rather than relying on emotional sensationalism, Hove carefully built the State’s case through sequential evidence and credible testimony.

Each witness strengthened the prosecution’s timeline.

The accused’s mother established the threats.

The deceased’s brother confirmed her final plea for help.

Police officers documented the gruesome scene.

The pathologist scientifically linked the assault to the cause of death.

Importantly, the State maintained fairness and professional restraint throughout the trial, avoiding reliance on inadmissible material or speculative claims.

Instead, the prosecution allowed the facts themselves to reveal the brutality of the crime.

In mitigation, defence lawyer Thomas Militao urged the court to show mercy, emphasising that Kadhlanga was youthful, a first offender and the father of a minor child.

But Justice Mutevedzi ruled that the aggravating factors overwhelmingly outweighed mitigation.

The brutality of the attack, threats beforehand, targeting of a vulnerable spouse, near danger posed to a child, the betrayal of marriage and all demanded a strong judicial response.

“Society expects the courts to protect the sanctity of human life and denounce domestic brutality in the strongest possible terms,” Justice Mutevedzi declared.

Although the judge stopped short of imposing life imprisonment, he concluded that only a lengthy custodial sentence could adequately reflect the gravity of the offence.

“In the end, we are convinced that what he deserves is a lengthy determined custodial sentence.”

Then came the sentence, thirty years imprisonment.