Johannesburg - Double-murder accused Frans Seroba’s brother stormed out of court crying and shouting on Tuesday, berating Seroba for putting the family through a tumultuous time.
“How can he put us through this? He’s disgusting,” Seroba’s younger brother, Richard, shouted as he stormed out of courtroom 9 in the High Court sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court.
Seroba is facing murder charges for gunning down his wife, Refilwe Martha Seroba, and the wife’s sister, Sarah Makwati, on January 20, 2007. He has pleaded insanity, saying he cannot be held criminally responsible as he was not himself that day.
On Tuesday, raw emotions that had been bottled up for more than eight years bubbled up to the surface as relatives broke down and cried bitterly while testifying in court.
In the public gallery, 89-year-old Mmapula Johanna Ramokgopa sat quietly, wiping tears with her scarf, as details of her two daughters’ murders were laid bare before Acting Judge Dario Dosio.
On the day of the incident, Richard’s other brother had phoned, saying there had been an incident at Seroba’s house.
“When I got to the lounge, my sister-(in-law) was lying flat on the floor. I was shocked. I tried shaking her to wake her up… she didn’t wake up. I tried calling my brother (Seroba), but I was in such a state of shock, I couldn’t dial the numbers,” said Richard, crying bitterly as his brother sat hunched in the dock, his hands placed on his head.
As he walked around the house trying to find the couple’s children, he saw his brother driving in at high speed, he said.
“I wanted to tell him what I’d just witnessed, but when he walked in with a firearm in his hand, I thought he already knew what had happened,” said Richard.
His brother walked right past him without saying a word.
“He looked different. I can’t explain what I saw. I had never seen him like that before. He was in a state… pacing up and down, with a gun in his hand. His eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his skull. His teeth were exposed… he looked like an animal. I feared for my life,” Richard testified.
As he said this, his brother started weeping and shaking.
Also at the scene was Seroba’s mother. Earlier in the day, Seroba had dropped off his 10-year-old twin boys at her Diepkloof house, but according to the boys, “he left before saying hi”.
The woman, said Richard, was distraught and fainted on arrival at the house. When she came to, she yelled at police to shoot her son or give her the gun so she could finish him off herself.
“You killed ngwana wa mokgotse waka (my daughter-in-law),” the woman said, according to Richard.
When Makwati’s son Mosehle arrived with the police, she collapsed again when she realised that her son had not only killed his wife, but the wife’s sister as well.
Richard lost his cool when defence advocate Schalk Willem van der Merwe started cross-examining him.
He got agitated and started throwing his hands around, pointing at his brother, saying he was the one who was supposed to be grilled, not him.
“Judge, I’m not on trial here… it’s this man here. Why am I being questioned like this?” he said, crying and yelling as he roughly swung the swivel door leading from the witness stand to the public gallery, storming out of court and forcing Judge Dosio to adjourn proceedings temporarily.
Also testifying were Makwati’s daughter Morwa and Mosehle. They had accompanied their mother to a Braamfontein surgery, where she worked as a nurse, and while Mosehle waited in the car, Morwa had been with her mother at reception when Seroba walked in with a plastic bag containing a brown A4 envelope.
He greeted as usual and said his wife was home doing the laundry.
But then he walked towards the exit and a few minutes later, he returned, pointed the firearm at Makwati and shot her, said Morwa.
“I then screamed. As I screamed, I ran… he fired the second shot,” said Morwa.
Mosehle heard the gunshots from the parking lot downstairs. He heard his sister crying, and as he ran into the reception area, he saw blood gushing out of his mother’s chest, he said.
“I did not know what to do, but remember thinking I need to take responsibility. I wanted to call my aunt to get out of the house with the children, but couldn’t get hold of her,” he said.
He then called police, and when they arrived at Seroba’s Buccleuch house, Richard had restrained him, trying to stop him from entering the house.
“I was trying to get into the house to tell my aunt what had happened. I saw somebody covered with a sheet at the bottom of the stairs. I pulled it and saw her… she had a gunshot wound right here… the back of the skull,” said Mosehle, breaking down and crying bitterly.
Seroba also let out a cry.
The trial continues.
The Star