Cape Town - Convicted killer Zulpha Jacobs threatened to kill her two-year-old son Taariq shortly before she took him to a bushy area in Mitchells Plain and smothered him to death in the sand.
He had been crying for porridge when she made the threat which she later carried out.
This emerged in the Western Cape High Court when Jacobs entered into a plea and sentence agreement with the State on Monday.
As part of the deal, Jacobs was sentenced to 20 years in jail for premeditated murder and two years for defeating the ends of justice. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Jacobs admitted that she and Taariq were in the kitchen of her friend’s Beacon Valley house around 8am on December 29.
Taariq had started crying because he wanted porridge and Jacobs shouted at him, saying there was no more porridge.
Her friend overheard her telling him, “I wish you can get out of my life. You make my life miserable. Ek maak jou sommer vrek. (I could just kill you),” Jacobs said.
Shortly thereafter, Jacobs took him to a deserted area in some bush close to Riley Road in Beacon Valley and killed him.
“She covered him with a jacket and covered his feet with newspaper,” the plea reads.
Jacobs then left her son in the bush and went to the Mitchells Plain police station to report that he had gone missing from the Town Centre shopping complex.
A large-scale community and police search ensued and Taariq’s body was found on December 31.
Jacobs was arrested and held in custody for nearly a year because she did not apply for bail in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate’s Court.
After she was sentenced, her lawyer, Mornay Calitz, read a candid letter, which had been handwritten by Jacobs. In it she apologised to her family and her in-laws for the pain and suffering she had caused them and asked that they forgive her for taking Taariq’s life.
“I was not thinking clearly ’cause I had no-one to turn to, so I thought by doing that to Taariq it will be the best for him. But it still doesn’t give me the right to do what I did. I am his mother, I was supposed to love and protect him but I chose the easy way out. Instead I have hurt the person who didn’t do anything to me,” Jacobs said in the letter.
She also said that she wanted her family and the Jacobs family to forgive each other so that everyone could move on with their lives.
“Can you do that for me today, before I leave? Do it for Taariq too. Just forgive and move on from here so that I can concentrate on forgiving myself for what happened. I love you all and I will miss you all. Shukran (thank you) for everything,” Jacobs said.
Cape Argus