Pretoria - The wife of a police VIP unit member wiped tears from her eyes after she was sentenced to 30 years in jail for hiring a hitman to kill her common-law husband.
Popo Mahlangu, 26, hired Edward Sanane, 25, by offering him an undisclosed amount of money to shoot the father of her daughter.
Malesela Chokoe was shot in the head in the couple’s Bronkhorst-spruit home while he was asleep.
Mahlangu and Sanane, of Atteridgeville, pleaded guilty to murder in the high court in Pretoria. Mahlangu was also convicted of defeating the ends of justice, as she told police her husband had gone missing. But the pair had dumped his body into a river. It was only retrieved weeks later. Mahlangu told police she did not know where he was; he had disappeared.
She later admitted that she approached Sanane in October 2013 and promised him money if he shot her husband. She gave him a firearm and they decided on which day the killing would be carried out.
Mahlangu opened the door to their house for the hitman, who shot the sleeping Chokoe. They wrapped his body in a blanket, loaded it into his car and dumped it in a river.
Mahlangu said she and her husband had marital difficulties. He cheated on her and was abusive, she said. She desperately tried to get help. She called on the family and the police to speak to him but they refused to assist her. She said she even tried to obtain a family protection order against him, but because he was a policeman, nobody would assist her.
Neither of the two accused chose to take the stand in mitigation of sentence, but expressed their remorse through their advocate.
Judge Bert Bam said he doubted this was true remorse, as they chose not to show it to the court by testifying. There was a vast difference between regret and remorse, he noted. The State said it had a watertight case against the two and the judge said it seemed that they did not have a choice but to plead guilty.
The judge did not impose a life sentence on Mahlangu, saying her circumstances called for a lesser sentence, as she was unhappy with her husband. She also had to explain to her child one day what happened.
But Sanane was an assassin who killed for money, the judge said.
Pretoria News