WE’RE HEARTBROKEN!
The grieving family and friends of Karabo Mokoena recall the terrible abuse she suffered at the hands of her lover
CLUSTERS of sombrelooking family, neighbours and friends gather in the spacious lounge of the house in Diepkloof, Soweto, talking in hushed voices. A long table pushed against a wall offers tea, coffee and homemade fat cakes to sympathisers who’ve been filing into the Mokoena home since early morning.
A short passage from the lounge leads to a bedroom where a grief-stricken Lollo Mokoena sits hunched on a mattress on the floor, her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Mokoena, trying to console her.
It’s the day before Mother’s Day – a day Lollo should be celebrating. Instead she’s mourning the brutal murder of her only daughter, Karabo – a death that shocked Mzansi and thrust the incidence of maleon-female abuse back into the spotlight.
Karabo (22) was allegedly killed by her 27-year-old forex trader boyfriend, Sandile Mantsoe, after a fight on 28 April.
Police believe he killed her inside his luxury Sandton Skye apartment and stuffed her body into a garbage bin, which he wheeled out to his car. He transferred the body to the boot then drove to an open field in Lyndhurst in southern Joburg, where he placed a tyre around Karabo’s neck, poured petrol over her and set her alight.
Lollo can’t bear the thought of her baby girl’s death and breaks down as she tells us of her visit to the site.
“The police took us to see the place where they found the burnt remains of Karabo. You know when you pass by a dead dog that was dumped in a patch of grass and gravel on the side of the road? That was what this place looked like.”
KARABO met Sandile in October last year while they were out with friends at a popular Sandton nightclub. But the relationship was volatile and soon Karabo was being subjected to abuse, family and friends claim.
Lollo recalls the first time she met her daughter’s new boyfriend when Karabo brought him home one Saturday night.
“My first impression was that he was a charmer. He didn’t impress me. In fact,
I wanted to shout at him because I discovered he’d beaten Karabo before,” she says.
“She told me she’d met up with a friend and when she returned to Sandile’s flat he opened the door but didn’t want her to enter because he had another girl there. He head-butted Karabo at the door,” Lollo says.
“She was bleeding and she told me his mother took her to hospital. I told her, ‘You know you’re going to die; this guy’s going to kill you’.”
Lollo says Karabo briefly left Sandile but they got back together.
“When she brought him home I didn’t want to greet him, I was so angry that he could hurt my child. Karabo begged me not to shout at him. She said he had a lot of stress.”
Michelle, one of Karabo’s close friends who asked only to be identified by her first name, says taken at face value Sandile “was just a nice guy”.
“He looked so innocent but it became clear to us after just a few months he was extremely abusive to Karabo behind closed doors. I despised him after the first time he hit her. I only tolerated him for her sake,” Michelle says.
But Karabo loved Sandile, she adds. She recognised the good in others and forgave easily. But the beatings apparently continued.
“I was at work when she called me from [Mediclinic] Morningside hospital,” is how Lollo recalls hearing about the second major beating Karabo got.
“Her sister went to fetch her but she didn’t want to come home because she didn’t want her father to see her like that. She booked into a hotel in Sandton and I went to see her.
“We cried together that day. I told her she doesn’t deserve this. I asked her, what is it about Sandile that makes you run after him? I told her to lay an assault charge against him.”
Karabo checked out of the hotel and agreed to go home with her mother. Her father, Maugraigne, got home late that night and only saw Karabo at breakfast the next morning. She had a black eye and bruises on her face and body.
Her dad persuaded her to lay assault charges against Sandile.
“Sandile kept sending Karabo messages but we told her not to talk to him. She went out one night with her sister and she saw Sandile with a girl. I told her to ignore him,” Lollo says.
Michelle recalls seeing Karabo “with bruises everywhere”.
“She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. In fact, she said she looks like she’s dead. ‘This man’s trying to kill me’, she told us.
“She was very upset that he could beat her like that and then move on to the next girl. But Karabo was driven by her need to inspire people. She often said, ‘I am the voice God has sent.’ After this beating she made up her mind to leave.”
She started devoting herself to organisations that help abused women and felt it was her calling – to make a difference to those too afraid to speak for themselves.
FRIDAY 28 April was the last day her family and friends heard from Karabo. She spoke to her friend Stephanie Leong that morning. “She was upset and wanted us to hook up,” Stephanie recalls. “I couldn’t meet her right away and we made plans to see each other later.
“Her last message to me was at 2.10 pm. I texted her at 4 pm and again at 7 pm but she didn’t respond.”
Lollo and her husband were travelling to Durban with their two younger sons that day.
“My husband had his last conversation with Karabo,” she says.
“He told her again to stay away from Sandile and she assured him she would. I texted her later that Friday but she didn’t respond. I texted her again on Saturday morning and still no response.
(Turn over)
‘After just a few months he was extremely abusive to Karabo behind closed doors’
“I told my husband Karabo wasn’t answering my messages and I was worried.”
Karabo’s parents returned home late on Monday 1 May and still there was no word from their daughter. “I couldn’t sleep that night. I told my husband something had happened to Karabo.”
Lollo called all her daughter’s friends and when no one had heard from her all weekend, she filed a missing person’s report at Diepkloof Police Station.
Her friends Stephanie, Michelle and Lebo Mataboge were devastated. Stephanie decided to take the search online to Twitter and Instagram, while Karabo’s uncle, Tshepo Mokoena, turned to Facebook for help.
IRONICALLY, Sandile was also on Instagram looking for Karabo and even called her dad to say he’d help to look for her. “On 30 April, Sandile sent me an SMS. I wanted to meet with him but he kept postponing the meeting,” Maugraigne says. “We spoke on the phone and he was so nice, very calm and very respectful.”
“We were all confused,” Lollo says. “We wondered if Karabo was really missing because no one wanted to believe she was gone. People were saying maybe she was in hiding. I had this sinking feeling in my gut Karabo was in trouble.”
On Wednesday 10 May, Lollo returned to Diepkloof Police Station – this time accompanied by Karabo’s friends who turned up in four cars to help with the police search.
“Her friend phoned me that morning to find out what was happening and if we found Karabo. He offered to go to the police station with me. When we got there he organised for a police escort to go with us to Sandile’s apartment,” Lollo explains.
Sandile wasn’t home and when the police phoned him he told them he’d only be back at nine that evening.
Some of Karabo’s friends waited at the apartment while Lollo and her brotherin-law, Tshepo, went with police officers to get a search warrant. Maugraigne was at home with his teenage son, Lebogang, who was hysterical about his sister’s disappearance.
SANDILE arrived home at 9.30 pm, accompanied by a young woman. In the meantime, the management of the luxury apartment complex allowed the group to view CCTV footage of the day Karabo disappeared.
The footage shows Karabo arriving at Sandile’s place in a taxi on 28 April. It also shows Sandile wheeling a big plastic
bin in and out of his apartment. Sandile officially became the chief suspect in Karabo’s disappearance.
“When I returned with the police and the search warrant to Sandile’s apartment, he was there,” Lollo says.
“As I approached him he said, ‘Hi, Mamzo’, as if nothing was wrong. I looked him in his eyes and I asked him, ‘Sandile, did you kill Karabo?’ He looked at me and he said, ‘No, Mama, I didn’t kill Karabo’.”
The police searched Sandile’s apartment and discovered the carpet was wet after being cleaned. They also found blood under the coffee table and a pair of blood- stained takkies.
Karabo’s ID and passport were found in a bin on the same floor as Sandile’s flat.
Sandile was arrested and taken to Sandton Police Station where he was interrogated until the early hours of the morning.
He told police he’d left Karabo at his apartment that night and when he returned she was dead. He panicked, stuffed her body in the bin and drove to Lyndhurst where he burnt the body beyond recognition. He gave police the location and DNA results confirmed it was Karabo.
“To kill a person is one thing,” Karabo’s grieving father says.
“To put a human being in a rubbish bin and dump her somewhere takes it to another level. Her beauty was still there when she was dumped as if she was rubbish. But he wanted to make sure he destroyed that beauty and that she would be unrecognisable so he poured petrol over her and burnt her.”
Karabo had an amazing spirit, her friend Lebo says.
“She had a magnetic personality – she had ‘that thing’. When Karabo was in the room, you couldn’t ignore her. Her death is surreal. We’re heartbroken, we can’t hook up with her, we can’t chat any more and we can’t find closure because he burnt her body so badly that she can’t have an open casket. We can’t even say our last goodbyes,” Lebo says. S Sandile appeared in the Johannesburg magistrate’s court on charges of murder and defeating the ends of justice. The case was postponed to 24 May.
‘To kill a person is one thing. To put a human being in a rubbish bin and dump her somewhere takes it to another level’