Who was Moses Sithole – the Vosloorus serial killer currently serving prison service

Above all, he loved the company of young beautiful women, drove a Mercedes Benz sedan, dressed fashionably in fine expensive clothes and owned a charity home for abused and destitute children in his neighbourhood, the township of Vosloorus.

To get the charity recognised by the local municipal authorities in the City of Ekurhuleni, he attempted to establish links with like-minded children’s charities in the Boksburg CBD to garner support and recognition in the industry and boost its image.

One of these was the Teddy Bear Clinic in the Boksburg CBD, where they welcomed him for his charity work and accepted him with open arms because of his attachment to the plight of the poor and homeless children in the township.

Tragically, the 26-year-old pretty young female assistant who worked at Teddy Bear Clinic and was from Vosloorus ended up counted among the 38 women Sithole raped and murdered during his eight-year serial murder spree.

She was captivated and thought the world of the handsome and impeccably dressed young black man.

Sithole is in jail, serving the 2 410-year prison term imposed on him by Judge Curlews at the Pretoria High Court on December 5, 1997.

The legacy of his ruthless reign of terror will continue to live long after his death and the only question future generations will ask will be: “Who was Moses Sithole”?

Those who knew him from his early childhood described the flip side of this killer’s personality as that of a charming, handsome, young man who loved children, treated his wife and daughter with love and compassion and showed the needy with care and kindness – especially the women whom he was to spend almost a decade prowling secluded open fields seeking to rape and murder.

In fact, the more one delves into Sithole’s family past, the dimmer and murkier their history and origins become entangled in mystery.

Sithole is the fourth child born to Zimbabwean Simon Tangawira Sithole and his wife Sophie Mnisi, believed to be from KwaZulu-Natal.

From childhood, his life and those of his siblings seemed destined for hardship and misfortune; singling him out to lead a destructive life of violence and murder that led to the destruction of the lives of his innocent victims and that of his own.

Sithole was only two years old when their father suddenly died from an unknown illness that left Sophie, a stay-at-home mother, and the children destitute with nothing much.

Unemployed, and faced with no prospect of a steady income, the young mother of five children was destitute and depressed.

Perhaps, after carefully considering her dire situation, depressed by her husband’s death and having to face life as a widow, unable to sustain herself and her children, Sophie opted for a rather desperate measure to deal with her immediate problem – her starving four young fatherless children.

Early one weekday morning she woke the boys up, bundled them with whatever remnants of clothing each one could carry and frog-matched them to the Vosloorus Police Station, where she dumped them in a corner at the public parking lot.

But before she left them, she gave each a stern warning not to reveal her name or where she lives to the police or anyone else who may ask. The boys watched their mother walk away from them and disappear into the crowd.

The boys were later removed from the police station and taken to a place of safety nearby before being transferred to an orphanage in DingaanStad in KwaZulu-Natal.

According to Sithole, it was at DingaanStad that his life transformed into the sexual predator he became.

He described the rampant sexual abuses in KZN coupled with other immoral forms of activities conducted by his peers at the ‘home’ that eventually forced him to abscond from the institution and find his way back to the family home in Vosloorus.

When he finally found his way to what was his family home, strangers met the young Sithole he did not recognise.

They told him they were now the new owners of the house that once belonged to his parents. They bought the property from a woman who might have been their mother, but none could tell him where his mother had disappeared.

He later learnt that poverty, hunger and desperation had forced his mother to sell their home to the family and leave. Nobody knew where Sophie had moved to.

Young and desperate for a place to stay, Sithole sought refuge with a male family relative who owned a house in another section of Vosloorus. Later, Sithole met and fell in love with a local woman and the couple had a daughter together.

When the family relative he was staying with fell ill and went back home to Venda to recuperate, he left Sithole to look after the house. Soon, young Sithole stole the hearts of the locals and turned out to be a resourceful member of the community.

Besides carrying out odd jobs in the neighbourhood to earn a living, he did temporary work at factories around Germiston, Boksburg, and Benoni. Nobody knows why the sick relative never returned from Venda, but Sithole sold the house and pocketed the money.

He continued contact with the mother of his daughter and visited regularly with gifts and new clothes.

A keen dresser, Sithole was known as an impeccable fashionista, with a great taste of good clothes and the latest pair of fashionable shoes.

Author of the book Strangers on the Street – Serial Homicides in South Africa, Micki Pistorius describes Sithole’s fashion taste as expensive and noticeable. This is evidence of the magnetic attraction to his choice of victims – pretty young black females between the ages of 19 to 45.

It was around 1987 that Sithole was to put to test his newfound skill of his newfound passion – luring women off streets to his love lairs in secluded open fields around Geldenhuis near Germiston, Boksburg, Vosloorus, Soweto, Attridgevlle, Cleveland and Benoni.

His first rape victim was a 38-year-old petite married housewife from Vosloorus who was job-hunting on the morning of September 14, 1987.