Anna Majavu

Anna Majavu

A mother who strangled her 20-year-old drug addict son with a rope will today hear what sentence she has to serve.

Ellen Pakkies, pictured, has asked to be placed under correctional supervision but the state is calling for a minimum 25-year sentence for what it calls a "pre-meditated murder".

Pakkies, who wept throughout the trial, told the court that she had no option but to kill her son after he became addicted to the drug Tik six years ago.

She said her son had dropped out of school and looted all the family's possessions.

Pakkies said Adam even sold her panties to get money for Tik, and that when she and her husband banished him to a bungalow outside the house, Adam would break into the house using a hammer.

Pakkies has been supported throughout the trial but dozens of Cape Flats mothers, many of whom say they are also facing the same problem in a community where Tik abuse has run out of control.

The community even collected the money to pay her R1000 bail.

Last month the Wynberg regional court in Cape Town found Pakkies guilty of murdering her son Adam, and will pass sentence today.

Pakkies strangled Adam last year in a bungalow at the back of her house while he was sleeping.

She told the court that while she was choking Adam, he woke up and tried to hit her with a plank but she kept on tightening the rope around his neck.

She later told her employer that she had killed her son, and handed herself over to the police.