Durban - The rooms of an Inanda home, through which the sound of Zesuliwe Nxumalo’s singing voice once echoed, were quiet on Monday night but for the intermittent sobbing of the aunt of the 14-year-old girl, whose body was found in a rubbish bag in a toilet near Inanda Dam at the weekend.
The teen went missing at a party at the dam almost a week before.
“She was such a happy child, always laughing, always singing,” Mantombi Maphumulo recalled of her niece who was in Grade 9 at Hlengisa High School.
Zesuliwe lost her parents at an early age and Maphumulo, a 44-year-old street cleaner with six children and grandchildren of her own, had raised her.
She recalled the day leading up to Zesuliwe’s disappearance and the agonising days that followed.
Zesuliwe spent the morning of Saturday, October 3, at a Durban beach with friends.
She returned to Inanda later in the day to attend a party at the dam.
At some point, the friends split up. At about 8pm, with Zesuliwe nowhere to be seen, her friends returned to their homes.
Her aunt became “seriously worried” when she had not returned home the next day and by the Monday when she was still missing, Maphumulo hired a car and went to the dam to search for her.
“Local people there told me they had seen Zesuliwe that Saturday night, that she had come to them and asked for help but had then disappeared,” she said.
The next morning, Maphumulo reported Zesuliwe’s disappearance to the police and not long after, the clothes she was wearing that Saturday – a pair of black leggings, a crop top and a rubber bangle that she never took off – were discovered covered in blood near the dam.
“I just started crying and crying, asking God why this had happened,” Maphumulo said. “I knew then that she was gone.” A police search ensued. Helicopters, the K9 unit and police dive teams scoured the area, but to no avail.
Then, on Thursday, a local man who had been away for the week, returned home to a bad smell.
At first, he did not think much of it, but after further investigation the next day, he discovered a black rubbish bag in his outside toilet. It contained Zesuliwe’s body.
Police were still waiting for the post-mortem on Monday, but sources close to the investigation said Zesuliwe had been stabbed in her legs and chest.
Maphumulo was contacted and went to the scene.
“When I got there, I just fainted,”she said, “I do not remember what happened after that.”
A neighbour, Princess Manganyela, said the community had been left fearing for their and their children’s lives.
“We cannot sleep at night without knowing who was behind this,” she said.
According to the recently released crime statistics, 179 cases of murder were reported at Inanda police station from April 2014 to March 2015. This showed an increase from the previous year.
A total of 313 sexual offences were reported during the same period. This number showed a decrease from the previous year.
Police close to the investigation confirmed the details, but police spokesman, Major Thulani Zwane, was unavailable for comment last night.
Zesuliwe’s funeral will be held in Ngongoma, near Inanda on Saturday.
Daily News