Life for killer sisters

Greed spurred them on, but justice caught up.

This came as Pamela Kutumane and her sister, Thenjiwe Belle, were each sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of their domestic worker, Nomsa Magwa.

After discovering that Magwa was HIV-positive, the sisters took out a funeral policy on her life before plotting to have her killed.

They also attempted to kill another woman, Lindile Sizani, a distant relative who also suffered from an illness. Sizani, however, survived.

The sisters were also sentenced on several other counts, including racketeering and fraud, among other things.

Closing the chapter, Judge Chantal Fortuin admonished the two, saying it was clear the aim was to target vulnerable people by taking out funeral polices on their lives and then killing them, because “you could not wait for nature to take its course”.

“Running an enterprise like this is unacceptable,” she said.

“You are both strong and enterprising women,” she said. “Ms Kutumane, you used the little that you had and built it up into a successful business.

“You clearly have the leadership qualities to have become a role model to other women in your community,” she said.

“Instead, you used your strong characteristics not to build a better life for yourself and your loved ones, but to kill and destroy a family where another strong woman was struggling to keep her family together by cleaning your house.”

In the process, the sisters had destroyed their own families.

“Both of you should be punished severely for being part of this enterprise.

“To have someone killed for money is despicable.

“Through your greed, you denied the children of the deceased the love and care of a mother,” Judge Fortuin said.

She said the vulnerable in society - such as the young, the aged, the sick and the homeless - should be protected.

“They should not become easy prey for greedy people like you,” she said, adding the court had to send out a strong message to the community at large that murder is a serious crime and offenders would be punished harshly.

“You cannot take someone else’s life and be punished lightly,” she said. - Cape Times

aeysha.kassiem@inl.co.za