“It was an act of the devil.”
This was the only conceivable explanation Zahid Makda’s friends and schoolmates could put forward to make sense of allegations that the 18-year-old Grade 11 pupil hired two hitmen to kill his parents.
Schoolmate Thabo Selepe, 21, who has known Zahid for eight years, said the allegations had shocked fellow pupils, who were struggling to comprehend it all.
“I knew him as a religious person who was open, free and friendly. I never would have expected him to be capable of doing this… He was possessed by the demon, it was an act of the devil itself,” he said.
More than a dozen Stanwest Combined School pupils arrived at the Standerton Magistrate’s Court in Mpumalanga yesterday to show support for their fellow classmate, who faces charges of double murder, conspiracy to murder and car theft.
The bodies of Hanif, 43, and Fatima Makda, 37, were found in pools of blood in their bedroom in the early hours of last Sunday.
The couple, originally from India, had been stabbed more than 20 times each between the neck and chest.
Zahid’s siblings, aged nine and 12, were not at home at the time of the murders. The couple’s alleged killers fled the scene in the family’s Peugeot van, which police found rolled several times about 14km outside Standerton.
The case was postponed to September 20 for a formal bail application after Zahid chose to dismiss legal aid for a self-appointed defence lawyer.