High-pitched wails echoed through the corridors of the Durban High Court yesterday morning after five men who beat and burnt a 38-year-old father of four to death in KwaMashu were sent to prison for life for the gruesome murder.
One of the men’s mothers, who was sitting in the gallery, collapsed after Judge Themba Sishi handed down the sentence. She had to be carried into the hall, where she wept loudly for some time.
Judge Sishi described the murder of Nkunzikayibekwa Nxumalo as “horrendous, barbaric and inhumane”.
“Burning a person alive is the most inhumane manner of bringing an end to the life of a human being,” he said.
And he had found no reasons for any of the men to be shown leniency and given anything less than the minimum prescribed sentence for murder.
On the night of July 18, 2015, Xolani Ntombela, Lungelo Dlamini, Siyabonga Gatsha, Ndumiso Nyandeni and Siyabonga Ngema forced their way into his shack and dragged him out.
They threw him into a fire that moments before they had all been huddled around.
They pelted him with rocks and rubble from a nearby construction site and finally, they looped a tyre around Nxumalo’s battered body and set him alight.
The men believed Nxumalo - who was from rural, northern KwaZulu-Natal - had bewitched one of his neighbours.
Judge Sishi said the men had not shown any remorse.
“The deceased in this matter was a young family man with four children, who were still attending school. Their mother was unemployed. The family has been deprived of a breadwinner,” he said.