Woman who killed her partner must go to jail

A WOMAN who stabbed her partner and father of her children once through the heart as she claimed she simply could no longer handle his abuse, must report to jail to serve her effective five-year sentence.

This is the ruling of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in a judgment handed down on Monday.

Dawida Solomons has been out on bail pending appeal since November 2018 when she was sentenced in a regional court to 8 years’ direct imprisonment for the murder.

The court said it had deviated from the minimum sentence of 15 years due to substantial and compelling circumstances put up by Solomons.

However, Solomons took the conviction and sentence on appeal to the high court. The court confirmed the conviction but imposed a sentence of eight years’ imprisonment, three years of which were conditionally suspended for five years, for an effective five-year imprisonment. She then turned to the SCA and argued that in light of the abuse she suffered and the fact she had two children to look after, she should be given a non-custodial sentence.

Five judges of that court agreed with the high court that five years under the circumstances was fair.

Solomons said she and her partner, Barnwell Sebenja, 34, were together for 15 stormy years. The court criticised her for not laying charges of assault over the years.

Solomons was 47 when she murdered her partner. She argued a jail term would affect her children as she was a sole breadwinner, working as a cleaner and a part-time assistant librarian at Carnarvon Kareeberg.

Her children with the deceased were 15 and 11 years old at the time.

The night before the incident in February 2016, Sebenja and Solomons went on a drinking spree which continued the following morning at a shebeen. Solomons said he asked her for money, which she gave to him before she left to do grocery shopping.

When she got home with a crate of cold meats, he grabbed a polony from the crate, and this angered her.

A neighbour testified that an argument ensued. The neighbour left, but came back to check on Sebenja. He found him standing at the doorway of the house. According to him, the next moment Solomons plunged a knife into her partner’s heart.

The dying Sebenja staggered backward, and the neighbour caught him from behind. Solomons claimed that she had acted in self-defence.

She showed the court three facial injuries to her cheek, chin and forehead caused by stab wounds she claimed were inflicted by Sebenja.

She testified that she was hospitalised on each of these occasions. Her evidence was that she did not lay charges against him because she was scared of him. She later obtained a family violence interdict against him.

The family of the deceased meanwhile handed a letter to the court in which they disputed that he assaulted Solomons. According to them, Solomons was the aggressor.