Pretoria - A former constable at the Cullinan police station wept bitterly as a judge described how he shot dead his estranged wife.
Vincent Masela, 31, was on Wednesday sentenced to an effective 12 years for murdering his wife Mavis Masela, and for pointing his service pistol at her 11-year-old sister.
Masela told the court he had tried everything in his power to try to solve the problems between him and Mavis.
He called upon the priests of his church, the elders as well as their various families to find a solution, but it was all in vain.
He begged her to return to him, but she said she no longer loved him and wanted a divorce.
Masela this week pleaded guilty to the murder and in a letter to the court said he knew what he had done was not acceptable to the church or the community.
He asked for forgiveness from his family and her family, and said he was ready to take whatever punishment was meted out to him.
“I will have to live with this tragedy for the rest of my life. But I believe I will one day see my wife again in heaven,” he said.
Masela gave his family a thumbs-up sign after his sentencing as he was being taken down to the holding cells. But her family was not happy, and said the sentence was lenient.
“We will never forgive him for what he did. He not only killed my sister, but he also left their five-year-old daughter without a mother,” Masela’s sister Dipuo Hamese said.
She expressed her fear of one day encountering Masela in the street after his release, and questioned how her niece may feel about seeing her father.
“A social worker tried to explain to her that her mother was dead but she is too small to understand.
“She keeps on asking when her mother will return.
“To make matters worse my sister was four months’ pregnant. She was expecting a son and she was very excited about it.”
Hamese said the child was Masela’s, but he had questioned this, claiming his wife had had an affair with her supervisor at the Cullinan SAPS.
Arguments escalated when Masela said he saw a text message from her supervisor on his wife’s cellphone. He confronted her, but she denied the affair.
Masela said he became increasingly depressed and his doctor wanted to send him to a clinic, but his medical aid was depleted.
He also tried to speak to his commander at work about it, but the latter would not listen to him.
His wife eventually moved out of their Nellmapius home on Christmas Day 2013 and moved in with her parents.
Masela said he could not face living without her and on January 31 he sent her a text message, begging her to return. She ignored the message and he decided to go to her parents’ home to speak to her.
She was in the bedroom and he once again begged her to reconcile.
When she said she wanted a divorce, he decided that neither of them should live. He fired several shots at her and held his pistol to his own head.
According to Masela he trembled so much that he could not pull the trigger.
Judge Mmonoa Teffo said it was clear Masela had true remorse and that he had shot his wife on the spur of the moment.
Pretoria News