Johannesburg - Delusions regarding his wife’s infidelity drove him over the edge - driving him to fire a bullet through her skull.
Banker Frans Seroba has pleaded insanity, saying a “powerful spirit” had overwhelmed him on the day he gunned down his wife Refilwe Martha Seroba and her sister Sarah Makwati.
However, one of the psychiatrists who observed him after the January 2007 murder ruled out mental illness or intellectual disability.
Instead, Seroba had put up a theatrical performance, exaggerating symptoms of his mental disorder when being observed at the Sterkfontein psychiatric hospital, Dr Alma Kalaba found.
“It was agreed (with other psychiatrists) that some of the disorganised and more theatrical behaviour seen at Sterkfontein hospital may have been malingering behaviour.
“At the time of the alleged offence, he was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of his action and able to act in accordance with such an appreciation of their wrongfulness,” Kalaba stated in her report.
But taking to the witness stand in the High Court sitting in Palm Ridge on Thursday, Seroba disputed Kalaba’s findings and accused State advocate Leonie Makoko of electing to ignore psychiatric reports that had found him to have been mentally unstable and psychotic at the time.
“I don’t know why you (Makoko) say that because you are against the experts… specialists point to one thing… mental illness at the time of the incident. I’ve seen various doctors who all point to… this illness. There’s a term they use,” said Seroba.
He accused Kalaba and other psychiatrists at Sterkfontein of injecting him with a substance unknown to him and then of accusing him of exaggerating symptoms of his mental illness.
“I ask myself which injection they gave me at Sterkfontein… then they say I was malingering,” he said.
Seroba denied putting up an act and gestured with his hands to demonstrate how an “unusual spirit” had attacked him.
He said: “I don’t know what it was, but I felt this spirit. I felt as huge as my house… as huge as this (court)room, and suddenly I felt myself going up and then hitting the floor. I was attacked by this blackness.
“I felt like I was hitting the roof and then as if I’m falling down… into darkness,” he said.
But Makoko disputed this, saying his actions on the day were calculated.
He had driven his 10-year-old twin boys to his mother’s house in Diepkloof after killing his wife, before driving from Diepkloof to Braamfontein to kill his wife’s sister, Makwati.
“You were very articulate in your actions. You don’t drop off your children on the street. You elect to drop them off at your mother’s house,” said Makoko.
Seroba responded: “One of the doctors (who observed him) said a person in a psychotic state can function on different levels.”
For more than a week leading up to the shootings, he was struggling to focus and was falling asleep at work, and had not been taking his prescribed medication, including the “muti my dear late wife administered”.
Acting Judge Dario Dosio asked: “So you were not under the influence of any drugs?”
Seroba replied “No”.
The trial was postponed to July to allow Seroba to call a doctor who was treating him.
The Star