COMMENT

"Killed and hidden on the roof!" - Daily Sun

The front page and lead story of SA's largest daily newspaper, December 20 2013

Daily Sun (December 20 2013) - GOGO Thembakazi Ludidi went to work, leaving her favourite grandson with her jobless, dagga-smoking boyfriend.

The man was angry with the child, complaining there was no privacy for him to romance his woman.

HOURS LATER, THE BODY OF YAMKELA (7) WAS PARCELLED UP AND LEFT LIKE A PUMPKIN ON THE SHACK ROOF.

"He wanted privacy with me and killed my grandson who knows nothing about sex," cried Thembakazi (43).

Thembakazi said little Yamkela was her favourite grandchild, and went everywhere with her.

He was spending his school holidays with her in her shack inside an abandoned factory in Kew, Joburg.

Then her 51-year-old boyfriend from Diepsloot came visiting on Tuesday night.

He complained there was no privacy for intimacy in the one-room shack with the child there all the time.

At 6.30am on Wednesday, gogo left for her part-time job as a domestic worker, leaving Yamkela and a five-year-old child in her boyfriend's care.

"Just after I had left, my shoe sole tore off and I went to the house to change. I could feel something was wrong, but I went to work anyway," she said.

The other child in the shack told police that Yamkela broke his gogo's alarm clock radio by mistake that morning.

That's when the frustrated boyfriend is said to have started beating Yamkela. He choked him and banged his head against the wall -  again and again!

The second child told the police the man folded up Yamkela's body, put it in a plastic bag and left with it.

When Thembakazi returned from work, the child told her the man had killed Yamkela.

"I called him and asked him where the child was," said Thembakazi. "He told me he didn't know because the last time he saw him was early in the morning when he went to the loo," she said.

When the man returned to the shack the police were called. They took him for questioning, and he allegedly confessed to the murder, saying the body was in the shack.

The police brought him back and he "helped" in the search, but the body wasn't there.

Thembakazi had a strong feeling the body was on the roof. That's where police found it. Yamkela's weeping mum Nobesuthu Mshuqwana (26), said she had high hopes for her son. "He was a good child and always said he wanted to be a police officer when he grew up. I will miss him so much," she cried.

Yamkela was a grade 3 pupil at Reshumile Primary School and would have been in fourth grade next year.

Warrant Officer Moses Maphakela said a murder case was opened and a suspect will appear in the Alexandra Magistrate court today.

"He will also be taken for a psychiatric examination," said Maphakela.

See the Daily Sun mobi site for more on this and other stories....

 

The Daily Sun is South Africa's largest daily newspaper with an average circulation of 291,132 (Audit Bureau of Circulations 3rd Quarter 2013) and a readership of 5.7m (as per AMPS 2012ab). Its Facebook page can be accessed here. It can be followed on Twitter here. To find about advertising on the Daily Sun click here.

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