Cape Town - A Gugulethu resident who peeked through a window of a home saw a man being stabbed repeatedly and his heart being removed, the Western Cape High Court heard on Tuesday.
State witness Lelethu Femela said he and his friend were called to the house around 11pm last June because there was “trouble”.
He was testifying against Zimbabwean citizen Andrew Chimboza, 35, in aggravation of sentence.
Chimboza on Monday pleaded guilty to killing 62-year-old Mbuyiselo Manona, as part of a plea agreement.
Femela said he and his friend looked through the window and saw Chimboza on top of Manona.
“He was stabbing him in the heart and he removed it. He took it out and he put it down,” he told Judge Ashley Binns-Ward.
“He then cut it, using a knife as well as a fork, and he was eating it as he was cutting it.”
The witness said Chimboza apparently put the cutlery down and then repeatedly bit into Manona's neck.
Earlier, a forensic pathologist testified that Manona died due to deep incisions to the neck, chest and abdomen, and blunt force injuries.
A deep incision had been made in the chest, exposing the chest cavity and ribs.
“The heart was not present in the chest cavity... the heart was presented to me in a plastic bag separately in numerous pieces,” said Dr Lekram Alli.
“Those pieces were not torn pieces. They were cleanly blocked, incised pieces.”
Binns-Ward, a seasoned judge, sometimes grimaced at the testimony or when presented with photos of the scene and post mortem.
Chimboza, who had a window-tinting business, stated in his plea explanation that he stabbed Manona to death at the home of a former client last year, after a disagreement. He said he was sorry for what he had done.
He alleged Manona attacked him with a knife. He retaliated by kicking him in the groin, stabbing him in the neck with a fork and then repeatedly stabbing him in the neck, chest, and abdomen with a knife.
Chimboza's lawyer Yasmine Rajap on Tuesday denied he had eaten pieces of the heart.
She put it to Femela that he could not have seen through the window as her client had previously tinted it. Femela stuck to his version of seeing the murder.
Sapa