LEBOGANG SEALE
A BROTHER is facing a murder charge after he read from the Bible just before he allegedly battered his sister to death with a crowbar.
The man, who seems to have used the Bible to justify his actions, was embroiled in a longstanding dispute over the ownership of a house left to him and his sister by their parents.
“My enemies turn back when you appear, they fall down and die. In the world of the dead you will not be remembered, no one can praise you there,” read two verses in the open Bible on the man’s bed in his Zola home.
He entered the room where his younger sister, 26-year-old Nomadlozi Innocentia Ngwenya, lay sleeping next to her eight-month-old daughter.
He apparently struck her repeatedly with a crowbar. Relatives found the infant screaming and kicking next to her mother’s body in the early hours of Friday.
The baby’s head was covered with a continental pillow, raising suspicions that the man might have tried to suffocate her.
The murder left family members so traumatised that some collapsed and wept hysterically when they arrived at the house.
Words such as satan, lunatic, devil, snake and viper were used by outraged relatives and neighbours to describe the man.
The dispute over the four-room house began last year after the death of the brother and sister’s mother, said their uncle, Meshack Ngwenya.
After the mother’s death, the man obtained fraudulent papers claiming that – according to his mother’s will – he was heir to the house.
“He started telling everybody he was the rightful owner. He even chased away Innocentia, another 14-year-old sister and an 11-year-old brother.
“Nobody was allowed to enter the house,” Ngwenya said.
When attempts by relatives to resolve the matter amicably proved futile, Ngwenya and other relatives approached the City of Joburg’s housing department for help to clarify the matter.
The department referred them to the local housing office in Zola, said Ngwenya. Officials there could not find the file with the house’s ownership details.
However, they promised to help the family nominate somebody as the rightful owner.
On Tuesday, Innocentia, who had been staying at her boyfriend’s home in neighbouring Jabulani, was forced to move back to the disputed house.
Then, early on Friday, while she and her daughter slept, she was beaten to death with a crowbar.
The attacker, who had been wearing a balaclava, escaped through the ceiling and hid on the rooftop of a house next door.
“He tried to flee, but neighbours spotted him, and the police were called and he was arrested,” said Ngwenya.
He described his nephew as “a quiet but cruel person who did not mingle with other people”.
“What is more disturbing is that he used the Bible for killing a defenceless and innocent person.”
He blamed the council’s housing department for the tragedy.
“I know it’s a family matter, but my niece’s life could have been spared if the department had helped us resolve this matter.”
Ngwenya also accusing the Zola housing department of being corrupt.
Police spokesman Kay Makhubela said the man was to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court today on a charge of murder.