The Moriel Infrastructure Group executive fired after a viral video from a Sandton restaurant is Lawrence Mudzinganyama, who served as the group’s executive chairman and a director. After the incident at Vlamo restaurant on the evening of Friday 18 September 2026, the board said it had “resolved to terminate its association with Mr Lawrence Mudzinganyama with immediate effect”. He was removed from both positions, and the company said: “He will no longer represent, speak for, or act on behalf of Moriel Infrastructure Group in any capacity.”
Update, 6 October 2026: Mudzinganyama was arrested on 20 September and has since been charged. On 1 October he appeared in the Randburg Magistrates’ Court on 10 charges, including fraud, intimidation, crimen injuria and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and was granted R15,000 bail. The case was postponed to 15 October. Transport Minister Barbara Creecy has also said his contracts with her department are under legal review.
What happened at Vlamo
Video footage filmed at Vlamo, a restaurant in Sandton, shows Lawrence Mudzinganyama threatening women. In the clip he says “I’ll murder you now, and walk” and threatens to “put a bullet in all of you”, BusinessTech reported on 21 September. The footage spread quickly on social media and drew widespread public anger. He later issued a statement apologising “unreservedly” to the women involved.
Vlamo said in a statement that “the individual involved is not affiliated with, employed by, or associated with our restaurant in any capacity”. The restaurant said it reported the matter to the South African Police Service on 19 September and that a case number had been issued.
The fallout reached beyond his company. Steyn City, the luxury estate where he was a tenant, confirmed that it had terminated his lease agreement.
Arrest, charges and bail
Police registered an intimidation case at Randburg police station on 19 September. Mudzinganyama was arrested on Sunday 20 September and released on warning to appear in court on 1 October, IOL reported.
At that appearance he faced 10 charges, including fraud, intimidation, crimen injuria and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago told the Mail & Guardian that the state had initially considered R5,000 bail sufficient, but the court set the amount at R15,000 after considering the circumstances of the case and its gender-based violence context. He has been asked not to intimidate witnesses. “Other charges can be added depending on what the circumstances are, but for now, we are working with the 10 charges that are there,” Kganyago said. The matter returns to court on 15 October.
SANRAL contracts under investigation
The board’s decision carried commercial weight because Moriel Infrastructure Group, a multi-disciplinary engineering, procurement and construction contracting group, holds national road work. SANRAL said: “SANRAL confirms the existence of two contracts between itself and the Moriel Infrastructure Group on projects on the N1 and N2 national roads, respectively.”
The agency’s acting CEO, Lehlohonolo Memeza, said: “At the request of Transport Minister Barbara Creecy, SANRAL is also investigating whether the Moriel Infrastructure Group was lawfully appointed by the roads agency and whether it is fulfilling its contractual obligations.”
On 1 October, Creecy told SABC News that her department had “placed all his contracts under legal review and that process is ongoing at the moment”, adding: “We don’t have yet a formal outcome.” She said the department is also introducing new criteria for awarding tenders, under which people implicated in gender-based violence will not get tenders from it in future.
The scrutiny lands while SANRAL is already working to replace its scrapped R9.5bn road maintenance panel, a process that affects many of the contractors that maintain the national road network.
CIDB grading probe
A second line of scrutiny concerns the company’s contractor gradings. Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson said he had noted with concern allegations that Moriel Infrastructure Group obtained multiple gradings from the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), all on the same day, according to a government statement carried by SAnews. The allegations suggest the group may not have met all the requirements for those gradings, which may then have been used to secure contracts from various spheres of government. Macpherson directed the CIDB to investigate immediately and report back to him at the earliest opportunity.
As of 1 October, Creecy said there was no formal outcome of the legal review of the contracts. We could not find a published outcome of the CIDB investigation by the time of this update.
The risk for companies with state contracts
For any business that bids for public work, the case shows how one leader’s conduct can put a company’s contracts at risk. Within two weeks of the video, a group that holds national road contracts faced a ministerial request to test whether its SANRAL appointment was lawful and a separate probe into its CIDB gradings, while the Department of Transport placed his contracts under legal review. The board moved to cut ties before any of those processes had concluded.
Creecy’s plan to bar people implicated in gender-based violence from her department’s tenders means bidders should expect closer checks on the people who own and lead a company, not only on its paperwork. The rules governing state buying are also in flux after the Constitutional Court struck down the 2024 Public Procurement Act, and the construction sector is under wider pressure over how tenders are won, as Thobani Ndlovu’s discussion of the construction mafia and tenders sets out. Contractors with state work should keep their CIDB grading records, director details and compliance documents current and accurate, because each can be examined at short notice once a company is in the public eye.
