Story of a man shot in the head is a modern parable for SA’s gun fanatics

It was a Saturday in Muldersdrift, about 30km northwest of Johannesburg, when Leendert Johannes Cloete (59), known to his friends as Len, made a choice. Why he made it remains known perhaps only to those present that night on 13 November 2021 when he was shot in the head by a young South African Police Service officer.

Len, a colossus of a bodybuilder, was naked when the police arrived at the Misty Hills Country Hotel, Conference Centre and Spa where he and his wife of five years, Chantal, and two friends were spending the weekend.

The rustic complex is near the Cradle of Humankind in the heart of the Kromdraai valley near the Crocodile River. It is an expensive hotel, but Len and Chantal were used to a certain standard of living.

That night there had been some issue with Len insisting on checking in with his gun and the manager requesting him not to. The Cloetes countered that it was due to confusion about the number of rooms. It no longer matters.

Len was already a father of four older children and dad to Chantal’s two daughters from a previous marriage when the couple welcomed a boy, Esteban, into their lives 19 months earlier.

Luckily, the toddler was not there that night, but a video clip of what went down is still the stuff of viral velcro, like the AKA assassination.

A friend of the couple, Breydon Blignaut, filmed the altercation on his cellphone right up to the wounding shot after the hulking, enraged Len had wrestled a policewoman’s weapon from her hand. Then came the taunts and the insults, the escalation.

And there’s the bang.

Len’s bulk immediately buckles as he loses control of his arms and legs. It is horrific to witness; he goes down twitching.

Heat of the moment

Len weighed 120kg on the night the bullet slammed through his right front brain. At his worst in ICU, where he spent many months, he withered away to 57kg.

He picked up some weight along the way, pushing 87kg, but he remains paralysed, speechless, tube-fed, wheelchair-bound and in need of 24-hour care.

Len survived. His young wife and family think he did so on a wing and a prayer, by the grace of God. On social media daily, Chantal is not afraid to express her Christian faith. For the family it is a miracle.

In a fit of rage, driven by some atavistic impulse, no doubt exacerbated by the supplements and powders bodybuilders chug to keep the machine well oiled on the outside, on the inside Len lost control of all self-preservatory instincts.

His nuclear reactor of emotion overrode thought, logic and reason, and in those circumstances, most of us know, the ending is never good.

Is Len capable of ruminating on all of this now as he sits in his wheelchair with a severely damaged brain, a mute spectator to life?

Whether he contemplated this utterly tragic scenario before reaching for his gun in that moment and threatening the law is unlikely.

Blinded by rage, he made a choice. Or did he? Was his a choice to surrender completely to rage despite the pleas from someone in his entourage for him to calm down? Who knows?

A life lost

Before that night the couple and the family had enjoyed a very public life on social media. There were the shiny fast cars, monster trucks, Len straddling humongous motorcycles wearing his trademark head scarf to conceal his receding hairline. There were long road trips with stayovers in picturesque towns.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Guns and gun violence in South Africa — the evidence

Len was a well-known businessman who appears to have been linked to loads of endeavours. The couple and the family were well known and enjoyed socialising. Life was good. Len’s businesses, including the fitness centre, investment companies and a luxury car rental business, were doing well.

But all that vanished overnight.

Chantal has offloaded on TikTok and other platforms. She is currently a model and a finalist for Mrs Pretoria-Tshwane 2024. She still appears to be connected to the gym.

Her teenage daughter from a previous marriage is following in her model mother’s footsteps. And though social media hates a party pooper and Chantal’s posts are mostly upbeat, every now and again the mask slips and the horror is revealed. There are pictures of a bedridden Len with hollow, pleading eyes.

Reap what you sow?

No decent human can survey the shattered life of Len Cloete and the choices that led up to his bodily entombing without feeling sad and sorry.

If there is anything that can be learnt from that ugly Saturday night in Muldersdrift, it is that guns cause shit wherever they are found. The argument that people kill people and not guns is flaccid and intellectually dishonest.

The man you should talk to is Len. Only he won’t be able to answer.

Anger, rage, hate and other strong negative and malevolent emotions dig graves, for the hater and usually for the randomly hated. Len alone must sit through his own Via Dolorosa now. He and his wife in her mid-thirties and his young son and the rest of the family. The friends who were aplenty during times of plenty, Chantal has lamented, are gone, nowhere to be seen. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.