Ex-Top Billing star in court for assault

HE ALLEGEDLY slapped her, tried to strangle her and smashed her cellphone against a wall. That’s the damning indictment by police against popular TV personality Tumisho Masha, as claimed by his wife, Zozibini Mtongana, 31.

Yesterday, the former Top Billing presenter appeared briefly in the Randburg Magistrates Court on charges of intent to cause grievous bodily harm and malicious damage to property at the couple’s upmarket home in Dainfern, north of Joburg.

Douglasdale police arrested the actor this week for the alleged assault at the couple’s home on July 20 after an argument over Mtongana’s decision to sleep in their guest room.

During his hour-long wait for the magistrate, Masha, 41, appeared anxious, staring at his cellphone, headphones on.

Mtongana had taken out an interim protection order against Masha immediately after the incident.

The inquiry date was scheduled for Thursday, but on Wednesday, she laid charges against him.

Masha was arrested on Thursday morning while on his way to Randburg Court for the inquiry. He was taken by the police to the Douglasdale police station to be formally charged.

Masha offered to vacate the matrimonial home and was released on bail. Yesterday, his lawyer refused to comment.

Last month, after Masha’s wife had filed an interim protection order against her husband, Sunday World reported that the actor allegedly kicked her in the stomach, slapped her in the face, pulled her by her hair, hit her with an elbow and called her a bitch in a series of domestic violence episodes at their home.

Masha denied the claims. He confirmed to Sunday World that the couple did have an argument but insisted he hadn’t touched her, and only broken her phone.

He told the newspaper: “My wife is light-skinned. How come she went to work that day and nobody noticed anything?”

Mtongana met Masha a year after his much-publicised divorce from his first wife Angel, and she married him in 2010.

In June, Masha was hijacked at gunpoint and held for five hours in Soshanguve, in the north of Pretoria, but escaped unharmed.

In a statement, he said South Africans should “not be held ransom to thugs”.

Earlier this year, EFF spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and Masha engaged in a heated war of words on Talk Radio 702 over controversial “racist” comments made by Sandton-based Rivers Church pastor Andre Olivier.

Masha insisted Olivier and the church were not racist.

The asasult case has been postponed to October 7 for further investigation.