A “celebrity” lawyer who has taken centre stage has overshadowed what could have been a historic revenge porn court case.
This week, social media users woke up to a compromising video of influencer Gcinile Twala making the rounds on X (formerly Twitter) in what has been described as revenge porn.
This comes after her controversial businessman, an alleged fraudster and her ex-boyfriend, Themba “Grootman” Silahle, previously threatened to leak her nudes and approached popular influencers to help spread the video.
An anonymous social media user shared the video on Monday, which quickly trended for most of the week.
Calls began to mount for Silahle, who is also the father of Twala’s child, to be arrested and charged with revenge porn.
After various organisations and media personalities rallied behind Twala, numerous lawyers approached her to take up her case pro-bono and help her get justice.
Application to interdict Silahle
On Thursday, Twala’s lawyer, Mathari Manyisa, appeared before the Gauteng High Court to file an application to interdict and restrain Silahle from sharing any videos and pictures of Twala on social media.
The application also sought to restrain Silahle from “publishing, disseminating, circulating, distributing, and in any way disclosing to any third parties, whether directly or indirectly, any photos or video recordings or any portion thereof, or stills thereof, in his possession that depict the applicant engaging in sexual activities or nudes”.
Manyisa also requested that the court prevent Silahle from harassing, contacting or sending any messages to Twala in any manner, whether directly or indirectly.
However, the case quickly turned into a circus on Thursday night after Manyisa made the matter about herself by taking to TikTok to release videos aimed at addressing the case, but she was seen insulting Twala, threatening Silahle, and making accusations against him.
In videos that were reshared on X, Manyisa is heard calling Twala a popeye (loosely translated to stupid) and saying she is not scared of Silahle as he is a known scammer.
This girl is the biggest popeye
“When I saw the videos of Gcinile, she knew I had told her that I was one of the people who have always said that this girl is the biggest popeye that I have ever met in my life. You truly are Gcinile,” she said.
“I could have easily asked for R50 000 and said, ‘Gcinile, give me this money and I will sort this out for you, but I didn’t ask for a cent’. All I wanted to do was help, so he will go to jail. I am betting money on it.”
She added that she was not scared of Silahle and that he must not threaten her.
“He can threaten Gcinile, whom he slept with, but he is not going to do that to me. I am not scared of a dead snake. I am as crazy as he is,” she said.
Sihahle did not take the threats lying down.
After Twala’s camp shared his mother’s address and his personal phone number on social media through court documents, he launched his own attack and announced that he is considering filing his own court application for POPI (Protection of Personal Information Act) infringement.
