Johannesburg - Siblings Lindiwe* and Relebogile* were used to the sight of their father beating up their mother in their parents’ 20 years of marriage. But they never imagined he would one day stab her to death.
Now, with their father due to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for a bail hearing, the sisters are scared.
August 15 was a particularly strange day for the family, who live in Mapetla, Soweto. Their father arrived home carrying bags of groceries – something he hadn’t done in years, according to 22-year-old Lindiwe.
The family thought he was probably in a reconciliatory mood. After dropping the groceries on the kitchen table, he started pacing up and down the house without talking to anyone.
Retired from the SANDF in March, the man then confronted his wife and demanded sex in front of their daughters.
“He asked mom why she was still married to him if she can’t give him sex,” Lindiwe recalled this week, speaking from her hospital bed at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital.
Her slain mother, who was a teacher at a local primary school, had applied for more than 20 protection orders in their years of marriage.
That night, their mother had left their parents’ bedroom to sleep in Lindiwe’s bedroom.
While Lindiwe and her mother were asleep, he stormed into the room and started shouting and demanding sex.
“It got real when he pulled off the blankets. He had a knife in his hand.
“He then jumped on top of my mother and started stabbing her in the neck and tummy,” Lindiwe said.
As the stabbing continued, she said, the man kept checking her mother’s pulse to confirm that she was dead.
“He dragged my mom’s body like a dead dog…” Lindiwe said, fighting back tears.
Relebogile, 17, who was in the other room, realised what was happening and tried to run out of the house to call for help.
But all the doors were locked and the cables connecting the alarm system had been cut.
Lindiwe leaned over her mother to protect her, but she too was attacked.
“He stabbed me in the neck and it started bleeding. He continued stabbing my mother in the stomach until her intestines were exposed.
“My mother never retaliated, she never said a word, but my father could not stop, he stabbed her so many times while my sister and I watched.”
Their mother has since been buried.
* Not their real names
The Star