Johannesburg - A black cloud engulfed him and he felt he was being lifted up to the roof, then fell down to the ground.
When he came to his senses, he was locked up in police holding cells.
After five different mental observations by various teams of psychiatrists at both the Sterkfontein and the Weskoppies psychiatric hospitals, this was double murder accused Frans Seroba’s account of events of January 20, 2007 - the day he allegedly gunned down his wife and sister-in-law.
He previously told the court he had heard voices on the day of the incident and blamed the murders on a worm growing in his stomach.
Speaking through his lawyer on Monday, Seroba said he was not criminally responsible for his wife Martha and sister-in-law Sarah Makwati’s murders as “he suffered from a mental illness that forced him to be incapable of appreciating the rightful or wrongful nature of his actions”.
His trial, which has been postponed more than 30 times by 12 high court judges in Joburg, started with him pleading not guilty to the two charges of premeditated murder and a third charge of pointing a firearm at Makwati’s colleague.
On the day in question, his 10-year-old twin sons were playing soccer outside when they heard “weird noises” coming from the house, one of the twins testified on Monday.
“We weren’t sure whether to enter. We were too scared. It sounded like shouting. I could hear tension in the voices,” one of the boys, now aged 17, recalled.
They had run to the gate, and while they were debating whether to go into the house or remain outside, their father emerged, bundling them in the car and driving from their Buccleuch home in Sandton to their grandmother’s house in Diepkloof, Soweto.
“He left immediately. He didn’t wait to say ‘hi’,” said the boy, who cannot be named as he is a minor.
He could not recall the day he first heard of his mother and aunt’s death, saying he “sort of caught that something bad had happened to her” as he picked up “tension in voices in the house”.
The State’s version is that Seroba gunned down his wife, then drove to Makwati’s workplace in Braamfontein, shooting her in front of her colleagues.
Throughout the years, he has pleaded insanity, with contrary psychiatric reports being presented to the court.
His private psychiatrist maintains he is not fit to stand trial, but the State-appointed ones have cleared him.
This left relatives frustrated, and on Monday, the murdered woman’s brother expressed relief that justice was finally being done.
He had driven to the court from Pretoria with little hope the trial would proceed.
“We are glad that at last it has started,” Daniel Ramokgopa said.
His 89-year-old mother Mmapula Johanna Ramokgopa
said: “I lost two daughters. Two daughters buried on the same day
.”