Sifiso Mkhwanazi: Victim’s daughter details suffering, brother’s suicide

Mkhwanazi admitted to shooting Nyarai Chihota once in the head with a gun he found in his father’s safe before concealing her body at the family’s car repairs workshop in the Johannesburg CBD over two years ago.

The 21-year-old was on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment and declared a dangerous criminal by the high court sitting in Palm Ridge for killing six sex workers between April and October 2022.

Chihota was Mkhwanazi’s first victim, whose decomposed body was found stuffed in a black trolley bin.

Pauline Chihota wailed as Judge Cassim Moosa handed down the first of six life sentences and had to be escorted out of the courtroom.

Chihota moved to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2010 to look for employment and better education opportunities for three of her five children, while the other two remained in the care of her maternal family.

As her eldest daughter, Pauline was the only one who knew what her mother did for a living.

When reading the victim impact report for Chihota, Judge Moosa revealed that Pauline is still haunted by the image of her mother’s decomposed body when she went to identify her at the mortuary.

“The deceased was building a house in Zimbabwe at the time of her death, and as such, it has been left incomplete. All the children are currently unemployed, and they are struggling financially.

“She [Pauline] has been psychologically traumatised as a result of seeing the deceased decomposed body. Her siblings experienced trauma, anxiety and depression due to the untimely death of their mother and the circumstances under which she was killed.”

Worried about her mother’s whereabouts, Pauline was among the concerned relatives who came forward after hearing that six bodies had been found at a Johannesburg factory in October 2022.

“I had to describe that my mom had artificial teeth and tattooed eyebrows. It took about six months for us to know that my mom was part of the deceased. After I received the news, my whole world was upside down,” she said.

During the trial, investigating officer Sergeant Bongani Mbonambi told the court that DNA testing was conducted to compare samples taken from Nyarai and her daughter Pauline.

Outside court, the 31-year-old became emotional as she revealed that one of her siblings took his own following their mother’s death because she struggled to sustain the lifestyle that the deceased was able to create for them.

“Things are not well. I can’t even take care of the younger ones; my younger sister is not going to school. I can’t feed them, and I am staying in a one-room [house]. Things are not easy because my mom was everything to us…

“I also wanted to kill myself. Unfortunately, my brother, the third born, drank poison, and we lost 12 December 2023 because of that situation. I couldn’t give him what my mom was giving him.”

Two of Mkhwanazi’s victims were at an advanced stage of pregnancy when they were killed, while three remain unidentified.

TARGETED ZIMBABWEAN SEX WORKERS

In his admission, Mkhwanazi blamed his killing spree on what he says was a false rape allegation levelled against by a sex worker of Zimbabwean origin, who demanded more money from him after they had agreed on a price for her services.

The state argued that the accused deliberately targeted Zimbabwean sex workers as a way of getting revenge for the ten months he spent behind bars in 2021.

During its arguments for mitigation of sentence, the defence asked the court to consider that Mkhwanazi was just 19 years old when he began his killing spree.

But Judge Moosa was not convinced.

“I’m of the firm view that the precise manner in which the accused chose his victims, the careful planning, level of deceit and exacting revenge in a cold-blooded, brutal manner is not commensurate with the mind of a youthful individual.

“The accused carefully chose his victims over a period of time and proceeded to rape and kill them in a systematic fashion.”

Judge Moosa described the rapes and murders as nothing short of heinous: “…the seriousness and gruesomeness of the crimes; the callousness of the accused’s conduct, the lack of genuine remorse on the part of the accused, the fact that the deceased were killed in revenge for an alleged incident that they had nothing to do with; the terrible pain that the deceased went through before they died. 

"Two of the deceased were at an advanced stage of pregnancy, and this was clear from observing the development of the foetuses from the pictures that were taken at the postmortem examination.”

Mkhwanazi’s six life imprisonment terms for murder are coupled with 170 years for rape, defeating the administration of justice, unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and theft.

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