Daily Sun (August 30 2013) - THEIR three children were killed in a terrible taxi accident. But Maria Mapheto had put them in the taxi against her pastor husband's wishes. And he has never forgiven her for their deaths. EVEN THOUGH IT HAPPENED 20 YEARS AGO!
Maria (54) was in hospital for months after the taxi crash which took the lives of her children Dorcas (5), Sibongile (2) and Ralph, who was only six months old. She told Daily Sun she tried to pray and ask for forgiveness from her husband. But not only does Pastor Lucky Kgomo keep blaming her, he is now filing for divorce.
No amount of begging over 20 years has made any difference. Maria, from Atteridgeville, Pretoria, said she and Lucky were happily married in Soshanguve when she decided to take the children to Limpopo in 1993.
The reason she took a taxi was because it started raining while they were waiting for the bus. But on the way the taxi crashed and it was only months later, when she woke up in hospital, that she was told that her children had been buried.
Maria said: "When I went back home, things were not the same. We slept in different beds and my husband accused me of killing our children. "He preached in church about forgiveness but he couldn't forgive me for the death of our kids."
Maria said she even had to beg her husband to take her to their children's graves. "It was two years before he showed me," she said. She said her husband accused her of killing their kids so that she could claim money for the Road Accident Fund. But Maria told us: "I loved my kids and I had no control over the terrible accident.
"But Lucky said very hurtful things to me. We are now strangers - he can't even look at me." When Daily Sun contacted Pastor Lucky Kgomo, he said that Maria should leave him alone. If she had listened to him when he told her not to take a taxi then the kids would still be alive, he said. "The kids are dead and nothing can bring them back," said Lucky.
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