An abusive husband who killed his estranged wife in a dispute over an RDP house has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the high court, which also ordered the home in Cape Town be forfeited to the couple's minor child.

During the sentencing of the man, who was convicted late last year of premeditated murder, judge Daniel Thulare ordered Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis to establish, without undue delay, a trust for the benefit of the child — not named here to protect his identity — to assist in upholding his rights of freehold ownership of the home in Fisantekraal, Durbanville.

He also ordered Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane to, within 30 days, locate the remains of the mother buried in the province and ensure her family, and child, visit her grave as part of their emotional and psychosocial therapy, as advised by a social worker.

National social development department director-general Linton Mchunu was ordered by the court to “provide all the necessary resources, human and otherwise, to support social worker [redacted] and all other necessary professionals in assisting the minor child in his emotional, psychosocial and other needs within their mandate as may be necessarily required”.

In imposing the life sentence, the court ordered the man also be declared unfit to possess a firearm. 

During judgment handed down in October last year, Thulare excoriated the way the child's mother was betrayed by a system meant to protect victims of abuse. She had obtained two protection orders, in 2019 and 2020, but was nevertheless strangled, burnt and buried in a shallow grave. 

After the first protection order was issued, she approached the magistrate’s court to complain about continuing abuse. 

Thulare said: “The magistrate did not consider the terms of the previous order and supplement or amend them to include a new term. In fact no reference was made to the existing order and its breach. The matter was treated as a new complaint with a new case number and new terms. The accused was ordered not to enter the applicant’s bedroom.” 

The second order made no difference. 

“Two protection orders issued against him in her favour did not help,” said Thulare. “It needs to be said that the system experienced by those who need protection most ... contributed to the failure to protect [her]. 

Her broken body was found in October 2020. The court heard that her estranged husband had previously told a friend: “I wish to strangle [her] to death around the early hours of the morning and burn her body next to the river close to us, my brother. I have had enough.”  

A few days later, she was dead.

Before being killed, the mother also shared voice and text messages with her brother and friends in which her husband threatened to kill her. “Most people go missing and do not get to be buried by their relatives,” said one of the messages.

The director of public prosecutions in the Western Cape, advocate Nicolette Bell, applauded the prosecution and investigation “in their sterling work which secured the successful conviction, the sentence and the orders”.

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