Cape Town - A Delft mother convicted of murder for setting her son alight as punishment for smoking cigarettes should receive a non-custodial sentence, the Western Cape High Court has heard.
On Monday, Noluthando Pamela Nomavayi’s husband, Mninawa, and her aunt, Nontsikelelo Joyi, asked Judge Vincent Saldanha to not jail Nomavayi.
Judge Saldanha had recalled Nomavayi’s husband during sentencing proceedings to get an understanding of why she had killed her nine-year-old son Aphelele on May 31 last year. Aphelele sustained 90 percent burns to his body.
He died after six weeks of treatment at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.
Judge Saldanha had found that the State proved its case against Nomavayi and convicted her of murder and attempted murder.
On the evening of the incident, Nomavayi, 33, found Aphelele and his elder brother Mnikeli, 13, with cigarettes. She took them to the yard and doused them in paraffin.
Mnikeli managed to escape but Nomavayi struck a match and set Aphelele alight.
Her husband said on Monday he felt sorry for her and did not want her to be incarcerated.
“I feel sorry for her whenever I look at her. I’ve already said she was God-sent to me and it’s not easy to part ways with her because my meeting with her was facilitated by God,” Mninawa Nomavayi said.
The court heard that, according to a clinical psychologist’s report, Nomavayi had attempted suicide twice during their marriage but her husband said he had no knowledge of it.
Nomavayi’s defence, Thabo Nogemane, called her aunt Joyi to testify.
She said she had raised Nomavayi because she had had a difficult childhood and was shunned byher mother’s home after she fell pregnant at high school.
Joyi had taken Nomavayi in and raised her as her own.
She testified that she assumed Nomavayi was angry at her mother.
“She’s got a lot of anger in her for the manner [in which] she was brought up. She is angry at her mother, doesn’t know her father…” Joyi said.
She also asked that Judge Saldanha impose a non-custodial sentence but could not answer when Nogemane probed why that type of sentence should be imposed for a serious crime such as murder.
While Nomavayi’s eldest child is living with his maternal grandmother, Mnikeli is in foster care.