More than a month has now passed since the murdered Granny Johannah Mpilo was buried, but the grief-stricken family still do not know why she was killed.
Johannah (65) was found murdered behind her house at Manamani on 5 September this year, in what was initially believed to have been a robbery as her house had been turned upside down and several items stolen.
The murdered woman's distraught husband, Ishe Livhuwani Mpilo, said his wife had stayed at home to do some washing when he left for Thohoyandou on that fateful day. "On returning from town, I hooted at the gate as usual, so she would come and open the gate for me, but on this day she did not come out. Fortunately, I had a spare key, which I used to open the gate. When I entered the house, I could see that something was wrong. Everything was turned upside down. I called for her, but she was nowhere to be found. I walked to the back of the house, where I found her, with her hands and feet bound. Her mouth was gagged and she was bleeding from her left eye," he said.
Mpilo said he knelt down and prayed that his wife might still be alive, but she was not breathing anymore. "My house is fortified with a high wall and some broken bottles, and it is not easy to enter with the gate also always locked. We later found that the attacker(s) had climbed [over] the wall to enter the premises."
The suspect turned out to be Mpilo's own son, Goodman, who had apparently left the family because of differences between them, and had gone to stay with some family members that the Mpilos were not getting along with well. They lived only a few houses from the Mpilos. "I believe the whole thing was hatched with his friends there," Mpilo said.
Goodman Mpilo (36) was arrested and charged with murder and robbery. He appeared in the Thohoyandou Magistrate's Court on Wednesday, 5 October. During his appearance, a group of angry community members protested outside the court, calling on the courts not to grant him bail. He has abandoned his application for bail and his case was postponed to 31 October for further investigations.
The distraught husband and father said he would not have peace until he knew who had been with his son on that day, and the reason why his wife had been killed.