‘I never killed her’, says man who admits to chopping up girlfriend

In yet another gruesome South African murder case, an Eastern Cape man pleaded not guilty to the murder of his long-time girlfriend in the Mthatha High Court – but bizarrely admitted to chopping up her body.

Bantubenkosi Siqotyana, 35, faces charges of murder, defeating the ends of justice and violating a corpse.

On Wednesday, Siqotyana pleaded guilty to the charge of violating a corpse; but claimed that his 32-year-old girlfriend, Nombeko Thobigunya, died of poisoning.

According to a DispatchLIVE report, residents of Thembeni village in the Zandukwana administrative area, outside Libode, were shocked by the grim discovery of the body parts of Siqotyana’s missing girlfriend in December 2023.

‘I cut the body of my already dead girlfriend’

“I cut my girlfriend’s body into pieces, loaded them in a wheelbarrow and dumped them into various unused pit latrine toilets of abandoned homesteads in my village.

“But I never killed her. I cut the body of my already dead girlfriend into pieces,” Siqotyana said in his plea statement which was read into the record by Legal Aid attorney Jongithemba Hanise.

“I first wanted to dispose of the whole body. But because she was well-built,  she was too heavy to carry. I then decided to cut the body into pieces and carry it in a wheelbarrow to various abandoned homesteads and dumped the pieces in those unused toilets,” he said.

Murder accused claims girlfriend was ‘poisoned’

Siqotyana claimed that Thobigunya was poisoned by a woman at the Limpopo Tavern, not far from his home where the couple lived together.

According to him, his girlfriend was allegedly given food by a certain woman “known in the village for killing people by food poisoning” at the tavern

Siqotyana said he later took Thobigunya home after he found her collapsed near a toilet.

“She had complained of stomach ache and I gave her a traditional concoction of aloe juice, but my girlfriend later died. In panic, I decided to dispose of the body by cutting it up into pieces.

“I never killed Nombeko. She died of being poisoned,”  Siqotyana said in his plea explanation.

Body kept in bedroom for days

He said he had stayed with the body in his bedroom for three days.

“The house was becoming filled with a bad odour as the body was starting to decompose, so I decided to chop it into pieces.

“I put it into a wheelbarrow and in the middle of the night I pushed the wheelbarrow and dumped the body pieces in disused pit latrines in the village without anyone seeing me,” Siqotyana said.

Heinous murders in SA

In the last few years, South Africa has been no stranger to heinous and gruesome murders being committed.

On 21 August 2019, “Seesig Killer” Kyle Ruiters brutally murdered his neighbour and cut her body up with a handsaw before dumping the parts in bushes around the Cape Town suburb of Bellville.

The Citizen previously reported that Ruiters, 28, stabbed to death the 32-year-old Lynette Volschenk, who lived upstairs from him at Seesig Flats, in Loevenstein.

He was convicted on charges of premeditated murder, violating a corpse, and attempting to defeat the administration of justice.

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