The Sunday News
Fairness Moyana, Hwange Correspondent
BULAWAYO High Court judge Justice Francis Bere has expressed concern over the increase in murder cases committed by mentally challenged people, saying such incidents could be avoided if communities take the affected people to mental institutions for treatment.
He said this while passing a special verdict in the case of Mduduzi Sibanda who allegedly killed his grandmother following a misunderstanding over chickens.
“The courts are concerned with the increase of murder cases committed by mentally challenged persons. Such occurrences can be avoided before they happen by communities applying for reception orders to have such people with mental issues attended to.
It doesn’t help anyone to wait for something bad to happen to take action. Let’s take our relatives and loved ones who we know are not mentally stable and get help for them other than reacting after a person is killed over trivial issues,” said Justice Bere.
The High Court on circuit retained three special verdicts while accused persons in three separate cases were referred for further mental evaluation at Mlondolozi Mental Institution with the possibility that they might also be declared unfit to stand trial.
The court heard that on 2 November 2015 at around 11am Sibanda had an altercation with her 87-year-old grandmother, Qanyana Tshuma who was accusing him of stealing her chickens.
After the misunderstanding she retired to her bedroom hut and Sibanda later followed her.
He is alleged to have picked up her metre-long walking stick which he used to assault her several times on the head leading to her death.
Sibanda has a known history of mental disorder dating back to November 2010 and was undergoing treatment.
Justice Bere said although a serious crime would have been committed by a person who looks sane to the public the court remained bound by findings of psychiatrists.
“To the eyes of the public he appears to have clear recollection of what happened, however, as a court we are bound by the findings of a specialist doctor who examined him on several occasions and concluded that he is mentally incapacitated due to drug abuse.
“Our circumstances in the country is that there are very few specialists with the expertise and this makes it difficult for the court to seek views from other doctors in the same field,” he said as he pronounced another special verdict in the case of Clifford Moyo from Tsholotsho who raped and killed his eight-year-old sister.
It is said on 15 June 2010, Moyo who was then aged 17 left for the fields to harvest groundnuts in the company of her eight-year-old sister armed with an axe. He later returned home without the sister.
A search was conducted and the body of Knowledge Dube was discovered hidden under stalks of groundnuts.
She was lying on her back with depressed wounds on her head while her dress was pushed up to her chest and panties on her ankle. Moyo is said to have admitted to raping her before striking her twice with the back of the axe above the right ear.
The court also retained a special verdict in the murder case of Vusumuzi Ngwenya who stabbed his friend following a misunderstanding over beer.
Murder cases of accused persons that were referred for further mental examination include that of Wonder Munsaka from Binga who allegedly beheaded his wife, whom he was accusing of infidelity, with an axe and Keressia Hlabangana from Pupu village in Lupane.
The 32-year-old mother of four allegedly beheaded her one-year-old last born child with a knife.
According to the State on 10 February this year Hlabangana went to her maiden home to attend her brother’s funeral who had passed away the previous day. While there she started exhibiting an unusual behaviour that unsettled her relatives.
At one point she insisted on leaving her one-year-old suckling baby immediately after the burial which wasn’t consistent with their tradition.
When she returned to her matrimonial home her husband also noticed that his wife was not herself as she announced that she had returned home only to leave their daughter.
Three days later she was still acting strange which was also noticed by other relatives of her extended family and later that day at around 5pm Hlabangana’s husband left for a church service.
It was during this period that her older children came back from penning the livestock that she dismissed them under the pretext that she wanted to bath. Later her eldest child returned to the bedroom hut and found her mother lying on her back with a kitchen knife in her right hand.
She had a cut on her stomach and was unconscious and next to her was Aquila Mlauzi, her child lying in a pool of blood with only a strand of flesh holding the decapitated body. There was a blood-stained axe next to the body.
