It was a double tragedy for the family of one of the six sex workers killed by Sifiso Mkhwanazi, as they lost not only her but also her son, who took his own life after her murder.
Mkhwanazi lured six sex workers to his father’s panelbeating workshop in central Johannesburg between April and October 2022. He tied them up and then raped and strangled them. The crimes were uncovered when a bad odour led to the discovery of the bodies in various stages of decomposition.
The 21-year-old son of one of the sex workers, Chihota Nyarai, died by suicide last year in December as he couldn’t cope with the death of his mother.
Nyarai’s firstborn daughter, Pauline Chihota, shared the sad news with TimesLIVE shortly after the Johannesburg high court sitting in Palm Ridge sentenced Mkhwanazi to life imprisonment and declared him a dangerous criminal.
An emotional Pauline, 30, couldn’t hold back her tears as she described the role her mother played raising them as a single parent. She said her life and that of her siblings was turned upside down when she found out that her mother was one of the sex workers who had been killed.
“I also wanted to kill myself. Unfortunately, my brother, the third born, drank poison. We lost him in December 2023 because of that situation. I couldn’t give him what my mom was giving him. So he decided to take his own life,” she said.
Pauline commended the court for the harsh sentence imposed on Mkhwanazi. She said she and her three surviving siblings had prayed for almost three years that he be sent to prison forever.
Since the death of her mother, she said, she had been struggling to cope.
“You can see the way I am. I am very skinny, things are not well. I am raising my siblings. Like I said before, I am the first child and cannot even care for the younger ones. My younger sister is not going to school. I cannot feed them, I stay in one room and things are not easy because my mom was everything to us.”
She said her mother was a “very nice person” and she didn’t know why he had killed her.
She was proud of her mother and believed the sentence would send a message to other offenders.
“I am not ashamed of what my mom was doing because I am what I am today because of her. No-one helped my mom to raise her children. I am so happy that she trained us in whatever way she did, and I am proud of her. God knows that I love you, Mom,” she said.
After her mother had been missing for about three weeks in 2021, Pauline received a call from police telling her they had found some women’s bodies and asked her to identify whether one of them was that of her mother.
“When I reached the area, they [police] refused for me to see the bodies. They said they were decomposed, so you have to wait. After that, I think it was about three days, they called me and my siblings to do DNA tests to see if my mom was one of them.
“I had to describe my mom as having artificial teeth and tattoos. After the DNA it took us about six months to know that my mom was there. She was part of the deceased,” she said.
She added that the sentencing won’t change the trauma, but it was comforting to know that her mother’s killer would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“It will not bring her back but we are happy that he is in prison. It doesn’t bring my mom back, it doesn’t bring anyone back,” she said.