The man dubbed “The Butcher of Nine Mile” looked more like a walking skeleton than a vicious killer.
Michael Fusa allegedly inflicted savage violence on the victim, stabbing her 148 times.
But the man who stepped into the dock of Mitchell’s Plain Magistrates’ Court on Monday appeared painfully thin and brittle.
He stood weak and bent, his bony frame poking awkwardly through a thin fleecy black top that hung loosely on him.
He nervously wiped his forehead with his boney fingers as the case began.
After he told the court he would plead guilty, he appeared even more frail as he hunched over, seemingly afraid to make eye contact with any relatives of the murdered Phumeza.
The former Philippi shebeen owner was casually dressed in jeans.
His eyes were sunken and dark as his lawyer revealed his HIV positive status.
Under his breath he whispered in Xhosa to a translator who then told his legal aid lawyer, Aamina Masoet, he wished the matter to be over quickly.
“I just want this to be over,” he said.
Fusa seemed visibly relieved when he heard he would not be seeing the inside of the notorious Pollsmoor prison and that he would be held at Strandfontein Police Station instead.
* This article was published in the Daily Voice