SOUTH AFRICA • Andile LEKGEU - 5 yo (2008) - Nebo/Pretoria

A Tembisa mother who murdered her five-year-old
son and mutilated his body to make it look like a muti murder was on
Tuesday jailed for 18 years.

Sentencing Batseba Irene Lekgeu,
27, in the High Court in Pretoria for the November 2008 murder of her
son Andile, Judge Vivian Tlhapi said she had taken into account that
Lekgeu suffered from a major depressive disorder.

This condition had to some extent
affected Lekgeu's appreciation of the wrongfulness of her actions. She
had also taken into account that Lekgeu was a first offender and the
mother of two young children who still needed her.

It was also not a case where one could say the accused had a propensity for criminal conduct, the judge added.

Lekgeu pleaded guilty to her son's
murder and told a psychologist she could not forgive herself for what
she did, and wished she was dead. She never took the stand to testify in
her defence.

In her plea explanation, Lekgeu
said she had blamed her son for all her problems because her family had
rejected her, as his father was a known criminal. She also received no
support and battled financially.

Her
youngest daughter's father refused to marry her because of her son, and
she feared he would become a criminal like his father.

Lekgeu admitted wrapping her son
in a blanket and taking him to an abandoned house in Nebo, where she
stabbed him repeatedly before cutting off his ear and genitals to make
it look like a muti murder.

She confessed to police the same day.

Lekgeu's mother, who is now
raising her daughter's two young children on a state grant, told the
court she had never shunned her grandson, but loved him as he was a
good child who enjoyed going to church.

Andile had even reminded them to
pack his church clothes when they left to go and see his
great-grandmother in Nebo the weekend he was killed.

Tlhapi said she was of the view
that the murder had been premeditated, as Lekgeu admitted stabbing her
son with a knife she had brought from home with her to Nebo. The
post-mortem report showed it had been a horrific murder, she said.

Andile
died of asphyxia due to manual strangulation. He had stab wounds in the
chest and abdomen, from which his intestines protruded. His left ear,
scrotum and magic stick were cut off after his death.

The judge said one could only
imagine the young victim being strangled by his mother, not knowing why
it was happening, and not being able to fight back.

She said the mutilation of the body was an aggravating factor. -