Johannesburg - A Soweto woman’s ex-boyfriend of 10 years came into her home, and stabbed and allegedly threw boiling water at her son and one of her employees, a teacher.
On September 25, Fikile “Shakes” Mlotywa arrived at the Meadowlands home, which is also a daycare centre, to find Phindi Sibiya, her 18-year-old son Thabo and two employees in the kitchen preparing lunch for the children.
Sibiya said Mlotywa locked the gate after the last parents had brought in their children. He then burst into the kitchen and shut the door.
“Do you know I could kill all of you here? I will show you,” he apparently told them.
Sibiya said they could not understand what was happening and tried to run for cover.
“He was just so aggressive, threatening us all,” she said.
Mlotywa used a pocket knife to stab Thabo in the forehead and the teacher in the thigh. He took an urn from the passage floor and threw boiling water at them.
Thabo’s upper body was burnt, his left arm, his back and his thighs. The teacher was burnt on her back and stabbed in a thigh. Sibiya’s left foot was burnt.
Sibiya escaped with one of the two employees through the window, jumped over the gate and ran to the neighbours.
“My son just told me to run,” she said.
Mlotywa fled after chasing Sibiya.
“Why didn’t he just kill me rather? My son is in his first year at college. I just thank God he is alive,” she said.
Sibiya met Mlotywa after he had served a sentence for robbery.
“In the past 10 years, he had never acted like this. An educated man with a degree, I don’t know what came over him.”
The couple have an eight-year-old child and had broken up in February.
“My daughter misses her father, but she hates him for what he has done,” Sibiya said.
The teacher has been released from Chris Hani- Baragwanath Academic Hospital, but Sibiya’s son is still healing in the burns unit.
With the help of some residents, Sibiya found her ex-boyfriend after a neighbour saw him in the neighbourhood. He was still carrying the pocket knife he had allegedly used to stab them.
He was arrested last week and appeared in the Meadowlands Magistrate’s Court, where he was remanded in custody.
The Star