Eswatini official found guilty of faking birth certificate and ID for alleged kingpin Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala

An assistant regional civil registrar in Eswatini has been found guilty of dishonesty and corruption after she was caught illegally handing out Eswatini citizenship and identity documents to alleged South African underworld kingpin Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.

Nonhlanhla Malambe was bust following a major investigation sparked by international policing agency Interpol, facing two counts of dishonesty for breaking the Public Service Act. While she tried to plead not guilty at first, she later admitted to what she had done.

According to official documents, the corrupt scheme started on 12 February 2024 when Malambe issued an Eswatini birth certificate to a foreign national under the name “Vusimuzi Dlamini” without any of the required paperwork. Just eight days later, she broke the rules again by issuing him an official Eswatini ID card.

“Ms Malambe used her position and her user name to commit fraud by falsifying the parental details of Vusimuzi Dlamini, thus bringing the kingdom and the ministry of home affairs into disrepute,” Eswatini’s civil service commission found.

[do_widget id=super_rss_reader-3] –> –> The ruling blows a massive hole in the story Matlala told almost a year ago when he appeared before the South African parliament’s ad hoc committee looking into corruption and capture in the criminal justice system.

Back then, Matlala flatly denied having an Eswatini ID or using the surname Dlamini, claiming that investigators had “planted” a picture of the fake ID on his cellphone.

However, crime intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo told the committee earlier in 2026 that forensic checks proved the ID image was actually part of a private chat between Matlala and his wife. The state alleges that Matlala used the fake documents to pose as an Eswatini prince so he could lease a luxury mansion in Waterkloof Ridge, Pretoria.

The whole scam only unravelled thanks to South African police and Interpol. Phathizwe Hlatshwayo, the assistant national civil registrar who oversees Eswatini’s Hhohho and Shiselweni regions, testified that he received an urgent request from Interpol to verify an ID number belonging to a “Vusimuzi Dlamini” who had been arrested and charged in South Africa.

“He stated that he punched the ID number into the system, which showed that this was not an old ID and had been recently processed by user X1003,” the commission’s report noted.

A quick system audit traced user account X1003 straight back to Malambe.

When Hlatshwayo dug deeper, he saw that a local woman named Thembi Christinah Zulu had been listed as Vusimuzi’s mother—yet his name wasn’t anywhere on the system under her list of children.

Hlatshwayo then tracked Zulu down to her homestead in the Motshane area, where the innocent woman revealed she had lost her ID card at a clinic and was horrified to hear it had been used to invent a fake son.

“I have eight children and all share the Shongwe surname … [I] never registered any ID card for anyone in the year 2024,” Zulu testified before the commission.

She told the hearing that the news “shocked” and “really bothered” her, as she was terrified her community would think she was “a promiscuous woman”.

The commission dismissed any excuse that Malambe’s actions were just a simple office mistake, pointing out that if South African police and Interpol hadn’t stepped in, the ministry would never have known about the fake ID.

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