Killing of Xaba will not be the last unless SA changes, memorial service hears

The student centre hall of the TUT Soshanguve south campus was packed full of mourners wearing t-shirts depicting images of the murdered student while brandishing posters with anti-GBV slogans.

Speaking at the memorial service for the final year integrated communications student, TUT vice-chancellor Tinyiko Maluleke called for urgent change in society.

“Once again a young South African woman has been killed violently and mercilessly. Her name is Ntokozo Xaba. Unless we change our responses and our behaviours as a society, the killing of Xaba will not be the last. We therefore may not use the occasion merely to shout our usual slogans. This time around we must do more than engage in a competition of expressions of condemnation, shock, and sadness. Neither shock nor sadness has saved a single life of a woman,” Maluleke said.

He said instead of her name being written on her diploma when she graduates, it will now be added to the list of murdered women – alongside that of Uyinene Mrwetyana, Karabo Mokoena, Reeva Steenkamp, Tshegofatso Pule, Jesse Hess and Anene Booysen and countless others.

Xaba’s friends lauded her for being brave enough to walk out of a toxic relationship.

Benzile Mntambo said while she had never met Xaba’s then boyfriend, she had told her about his abusive ways.

“She ended the relationship last year in August. When he ended the relationship he did not like it and that’s when the abuse started where he beat her, broke her laptop and her phone, and took away her food; she was left at her res with no food. That is all that I know about him. He was not a good person towards her.”

Emotions ran high when student representative council president Sizwe Nyambi took to the podium. Nyambi vowed to “kill” Xaba’s alleged killer should he be released on bail.

“That is why the day we went to court, I said if they give him bail we are going to kill him. We can’t lose a beautiful soul like this. Government has invested millions in her, Nsfas has invested lots of money in Ntokozo. She was doing her last year, and you just take her life just like that.”

Former junior Bulls rugby player Ngcebo Thusi was the last person seen with Xaba on Wednesday before the gruesome discovery of her lifeless body at Ekhaya Junction residence the next day.

“The university has tried by all means to brand him; he is a rugby player playing for the people’s university...and he takes our university into disrepute by killing women? We will never tolerate that,” Nyambi added.

Thusi (23) is expected to make his second appearance in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court next Monday, after the case was postponed for confirmation of address and profiling of the accused. He faces charges of murder and defeating the administration of justice.