Durban — Four kettles of boiling water were poured onto a woman who was strangled with a rope while a shovel was pressed against her neck.
This was Nomfundo Ngcobo’s evidence in the Durban High Court on Thursday at the trial of her stepmother and stepsister.
Ngcobo told the court how boiling water was poured into Smangele Simamane’s ear and over her face, how she was assaulted with a plastic pipe and how her corpse was stuffed into a suitcase.
Slindile Pamela Zamisa and Andile Zamisa are being charged with the kidnapping and murders of Simamane and her 12-year-old daughter, Sbongakonke Mthembu.
Ngcobo, who is serving 20 years imprisonment for her part in the murders, gave the court a blow-by-blow account of what transpired in the Zamisa home in Newlands West in 2020 where the child and mother were killed.
She said the attack on Simamane and her daughter had stemmed from a relative’s prophecy that the woman was one of the people who murdered her father, who was Zamisa’s husband.
Bheki Ngcobo was murdered in 2012. Ngcobo testified that when Simamane was in their home, Zamisa had said that she recognised her voice as being that of the person who had answered her late husband’s phone while he was missing before they had discovered he had been killed.
Ngcobo said they questioned Simamane and she denied knowing anything about the murder, and while she was speaking, the relative in the house continued describing how Bheki had died.
“She described that our father even had his eyes gouged out, and this made us angry. The painful things that happened to my father as he was being killed infuriated me.”
Ngcobo said that she, Andile and a teenager began assaulting Simamane.
She said that during the assault Zamisa went to boil water and after fetching it from the kitchen she poured it into Simamane’s ear.
Ngcobo said at that point Andile took two toddlers who were in the sitting room upstairs.
“Accused one (Zamisa) said I must get the vase and hit Sbonga’s mother with it on the back of her head because they took out her husband’s eyes. And I assaulted her on the back of her head with a vase. Thereafter accused one (Zamisa) boiled a third kettle of water and started pouring it on Sbonga’s mother. At that particular moment I was panicking and this agitated accused one. She then instructed me to go upstairs to look after the children and Andile must come back.”
She said that while a fourth kettle was boiling, the teenager pressed a shovel on Sbonga's mother while Andile strangled her with a rope and it was at that point that Zamisa poured the boiling water on Simamane’s head.
“It is in that process that Sbonga’s mom lost her life.”
The bodies of Simamane and her daughter were found dumped on Lwandle Drive in KwaDabeka.
The trial continues today (Friday).
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