MBOMBELA – Infidelity resulted in the murder of a woman’s boyfriend while she and her 41-year-old husband will grow old in jail.
The Nelspruit High Court sentenced Mr Muziwakhe Moses Sithole (42) to 18 years for the murder of the late traffic cop, Mr Lucas Zwelabantu Ndinisa (45) of Siyabuswa and seven years for the theft of his car, while Sithole’s wife 40-year-old, Ms Elizabeth Nomsa Sithole was sentenced to 10 years for assisting her husband after the murder and four years for the theft of her boyfriend’s car.
This follows the crime that took place on May 19, 2012 at Serengeti Guest House in Witbank, where her husband throttled and killed her lover during a fight after he found them naked in their room.
Elizabeth testified in court that she was guilty and regretted her actions of cheating which resulted in this matter. On the day in question, Elizabeth left her husband gambling at The Ridge Casino and went with the deceased’s vehicle to the room where she and her husband were booked.
She told the court that she knew the deceased from 2006. The two ended up making love and sleeping in the room and were awoken by Elizabeth’s husband who knocked at the door around 04:00 on the following morning.
She told the court that the deceased, who was naked, opened the door and a fight ensued. She told the court she tried to separate the two, but she was also beaten in the process. Her husband ended up strangling the deceased and hitting him with an iron rod until he was weak.
Elizabeth’s husband then took the deceased and put him in his (deceased) car boot.
The couple stayed in the hotel until 13: 30, and Elizabeth was instructed by her husband to clean blood stains in the room, while her husband went to a nearby shop to buy plastic bags which were used to put the deceased and a plaster for her husband’s injuries.
She told the court that she helped him put the deceased in the plastic bags after which they left Witbank for Bushbuckridge.
Along the way, her husband bought a 2litre of petrol and they drove straight to a dumping site where she helped her husband to offload the deceased from the boot and placed him on the ground. Clothes and belongings of the deceased were placed on top of his body and the petrol was poured over and set alight.
The couple then drove away, leaving the corpse burning.
The following morning the couple drove to the dumping site again, “He was burnt beyond recognition, one couldn’t notice if it was a person or not,” she said, with tears flowing down her cheeks.
She told the court that her husband loaded the remains into the boot again and they drove to the bushes near Calcutta where the body was disposed into a ditch.
The body was found by a cattle herd-man and his dogs on May 21. Two post mortems were conducted on the deceased and state that he died of strangulation and blunt trauma to the head. The other report states that he died of “burns”.
The deceased’s vehicle was tracked down by the tracking company to their home where it was found parked near a shack covered with a blanket and its number plates removed. The car was found on May 31.
Elizabeth told the court that her husband took her to some people in an attempt to sell the car.
Elizabeth’s husband was arrested on May 31, 2012 and she was subsequently arrested on June 4, 2012.
