Africa-Press – South-Africa. Mpho John Mothiba said he believed the discovery of his murdered wife’s cellphone, which uncovered a serial killer who murdered six women in Limpopo, was “an act of God and the ancestors”.
His wife Sarah Mothiba, 42, was a victim of serial killer Prince Willard Themba Dube, who was handed eight life sentences plus more than 80 years in prison in the Limpopo High Court in Polokwane this week.
Mothiba, a father of two teenagers, told News24 after the sentencing: “It is all through an act of God and the ancestors that all was revealed through my wife’s cellphone.”
Soon after his wife disappeared on 18 October 2021, the family started to receive calls from her cellphone number from a man demanding a ransom.
Dube was arrested after the police tracked the calls.
The bodies of his victims were discovered in shallow graves at different locations in Seshego, Westenburg and Mankweng in Polokwane between August and October 2021.
Some of the bodies were burnt.
After a trial that lasted less than a year, Mothiba said he was happy that Dube got life sentences “but the pain will not go away. He took away my wife.”
Mothiba added:
He said the children were aware of what happened to their mother, who was a staunch Zion Christian Church member.
“It has traumatised them very much, and they can’t cope. They used to be very close to their mother. I’m now a mother and a father to the children,” he said.
Ramone Helen Cholo described her 25-year-old daughter Andrea, another of Dube’s victims, as the “apple of my eye”.
Andrea, who leaves behind a five-year-old daughter, was a university graduate with a communication degree and was lured to her death with false promises of a job.
“I’m satisfied with the sentence. I still believe he (Dube) worked with other people, but he’s carrying the burden alone,” Cholo said.
“We will remember her (Andrea) on her birthdays. She used to celebrate birthdays with her daughter.”
Cholo said she was worried about her granddaughter and didn’t know what to tell her regarding what happened to her mother.
“Right now, she still remembers her mother. As she grows, we will make a plan on how to explain what happened. We hope she will take it,” she said.
Dube (37), a Zimbabwean national who was in South African illegally, was found guilty of the murder of six of the seven women whose bodies were discovered around Polokwane between August and October 2021. He was acquitted on one count of murder as there was no conclusive evidence to link him to the crime.
In court, he denied the charges despite making two confessions – one to a magistrate and the other to a senior police officer.
Limpopo High Court Judge Gerrit Muller described Dube as a “danger to society” and said he needed “to be removed from society”.
It emerged in court that Dube had previous convictions in South Africa. He was arrested in 2013 and 2015 for being in South Africa illegally and was released on a warning on both occasions.
In 2017, he was arrested for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to 24 months in prison, of which six months were suspended for five years.
He was arrested again in 2018 for contravention of the Immigration Act and was fined R800 or a sentence of three months in prison. He paid the fine.
At some stage, he was deported to Zimbabwe but again returned illegally and then went on the killing spree.
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