Johannesburg – The lover of hip hop artist Nkululeko “Flabba” Habedi told the High Court sitting in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday that tempers were running high hours before she stabbed him.
Sindi Manqele, who stands accused of murdering Habedi, said that when she and the deceased arrived at his house in Alexandra following a night of quarrelling, she got out the car and rushed to the bedroom.
“Tempers were high and I wanted to talk to him tomorrow,” Manqele said in court.
Manqele said she went straight to the bedroom and left a McDonald’s take-out bag on the coffee table in the TV room.
“I left it there because I didn’t want to eat anymore, I wanted to sleep,” she said.
Manqele said she had rushed to the bedroom because she was trying to get away from Habedi.
“I got into the bedroom wearing a pair of leggings,” Manqele said.
Manqele said she locked the bedroom door because she wanted to be alone.
Her lawyer Norman Makhubela asked her where Habedi was going to sleep since she had locked him out.
“He was going to sleep in his mother’s room,” Manqele said.
Manqele stated that she took off her bra, her leggings, and her shoes.
“My top was maroon,” Manqele said.
Manqele stated that she went to bed wearing the maroon top and her underwear.
She recounted how a few minutes later Habedi had tried to enter the bedroom door, only to find it locked.
“He then knocked and I just kept quiet. He continued to knock and said: ‘Sindi open this door’.”
Manqele said Habedi then started shouting, insisting she let him in the bedroom.
“He said ‘Sindi open this f***ing door, don’t make me angry’, (and was) banging the door hard,” she said.
Manqele said after a while the banging on the door stopped, but Habedi later went to the bedroom window.
“He continued to knock at the window. He wasn’t happy that I had locked him out,” she testified.
Manqele said Habedi insisted she could not lock him out of his own house.
Earlier, Makhubela asked her about screenshots of several calls she made to people on the night Habedi died.
“I took the screenshots on March 17, 2015 when I was released on bail,” Manqele said.
Her phone records showed that she made an outgoing call to a cab driver, named only as Khumbulani, at 00.15 on the morning of Habedi’s murder.
Manqele’s phone records also showed that she attempted to call her cousins, Thembela and Mfundo, that morning.
“I called emergency services at 01.58 but it didn’t go through due to [the] network,” she said.
On Tuesday Manqele detailed in court how she and Habedi had fought over money just hours before he died.
She told the court that Habedi had told her she was trying to fish for men and called her a gold digger.
“He was saying ‘because things aren’t going okay for me financially you want to get other men’,” Manqele said during the proceedings.
Manqele said she pointed out that she would not have been with him if she had wanted a rich man.
Earlier on Tuesday, Manqele’s lawyer Norman Makhubela asked her if she was aware of the financial difficulty Habedi was experiencing at the time.
“Yes, I was,” Manqele said.
Manqele said she had lent R200 to Habedi for petrol. She added that she bought anything else they needed and did not mind doing this.
She also told the court that on the night of his death, she had thought Habedi was jealous of her talking to other men.
Manqele has pleaded not guilty and instead claimed she made a mistake stabbing her lover.
Habedi, a member of hip-hop group Skwatta Kamp, was stabbed to death at his home in Alexandra in March.
The popular musician was knifed in the chest.
ANA