Woman found with ex’s decapitated head and upper body in suitcase abandons bail

A woman, who was found with her ex-boyfriend’s head and upper body in a suitcase, abandoned her bail application.

A 53-year-old man, Johannes Lebese, from Wattville, and a 33-year-old Zimbabwean woman, Tatenda Mhlanga, appeared at the Benoni Magistrate’s Court last week on charges of murder and violating a corpse.

Mhlanga abandoned her bail request in court, and Lebese’s formal bail application was postponed to 24 November.

This comes after the man and woman were stopped by the crime prevention wardens (also known as AmaPanyaza) on 11 November while carrying a suitcase.

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National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) regional spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana said that when the two opened the suitcase, allegedly at the request of the wardens, they discovered the upper body and human head of Obert Mazadza, 42, a Zimbabwean national who was also Mhlanga’s ex-boyfriend.

“After discovering the body parts, it is alleged that the wardens called the police. When the police arrived and were still busy on the scene, the Community Policing Forum (CPF) came and reported that they found other body parts at a nearby dumping site,” Mahanjana said.

Lebese was subsequently arrested on the scene, while Mhlanga turned herself in to the police on 12 November after fleeing while the wardens were checking the suitcase.

Violating a corpse

The High Court in Palm Ridge earlier this year sentenced Flavio Hlabangwane, the man accused of killing his girlfriend and keeping her body parts in a refrigerator in November 2021, to life in prison for premeditated murder.

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He killed and disfigured Tshepang Pitse, his cousin and girlfriend, and was found guilty and sentenced to life for doing so.

Hlabangwane further admitted that he looked up “the quickest ways to dispose of the corpse” and methods of killing Pitse online.

He admitted that, after their fight over a bank card, he killed her.