Elderly woman beheaded and fingers cut off

EASTERN Cape police are looking for murder suspects after an elderly woman was beheaded and her fingers cut off in her Flagstaff home last week.

The suspects also woman’s daughter.

This takes to six the number of women killed in Flagstaff, Tsomo, Tsolo and East London in the last two weeks.

Police spokeswoman Captain Nozuko Handile said the killings were only discovered after two boys who were on their way to school saw a dog carrying a human head.

After being alerted about the head, the community went on a search, checking each household for the body. “The residents found a body of an 89-year-old woman without a head lying in a pool of blood. When they checked further inside the house, they found the body of her 46-year-old daughter lying in a pool of blood next to the door with multiple wounds on the head. It was not immediately clear as to when the mother and daughter were killed,” she said

Handile said the elderly woman’s head had been skinned and three fingers on her right hand had been chopped off.

The elderly woman has been identified as Mbi Sibangalele and the daughter as Nomangesi Sibangalele.

The spokeswoman said the double murder has left the community of Sigodlweni in Qhasa Administrative Area near Flagstaff in deep shock while many women are now living in fear as they do not know whether this was an isolated incident or women were being targeted.

“We still have not arrested the killers and we urge members of the killed the public to help us trace them before they can kill other people,” she said.

Other killings incidents where women were targeted include:

● The Flagstaff double murder comes about a week after two women were killed in Tsomo.

Those victims were local teacher Nocollege Mgolozeli, 65, and emerging farmer Nomziwethu Ntozini, 67. The two were killed by two men who posed as police officers.

The Tsomo incident took place in Mdeni village in full view of one of the women’s grandchildren;

● In East London two women, Nomboniso Twani, 54, and Bulelwa Mpitipiti were kidnapped and shot. Mpitipiti died instantly while Ntwana succumbed to gun wounds in hospitals days later. They were allegedly shot by the husband of a Buffalo City Metro ANC councillor; and

● On August 21, 60-year-old Nosisi Noncedo Jokazi of Lower Sinxako village in Tsolo was hacked to death in her house. Jokazi’s daughter-inlaw Nobabalo Bhodlingwe-Jokazi and two of her brothers, Sixolise Bhodlingwe and Philile Bhodlingwe, were arrested and will appear again in the Tsolo Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.

Social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi and provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-Colonel Lizwi Ntshinga strongly condemned the killings.

“It is appalling that exactly in a period when we ought to be nurturing and emancipating women, instead we are faced with the gruesomeness meted against the most vulnerable in our society. We rebuke that with disdain. The law enforcement agencies must unleash all available resources to apprehend and punish those responsible,” said Sihlwayi. —