Johannesburg – A woman accused of killing her two children was sentenced to 22 years and six months imprisonment in the High Court of South Africa in Bhisho, Eastern Cape Division, yesterday.
Busisiwe Labi, a 34-year-old from Dimbaza lived with her children, her mother and her two siblings.
In a statement by the National Prosecuting Authority, a Psycho-Legal report presented in court revealed that Labi confessed to being a homosexual since Grade 7 and that her family did not approve of her sexuality.
The report further stated that Labi had said that she engaged in heterosexual relationships with the fathers of her children because her family did not approve of her homosexuality and that her mother wanted grandchildren. She further added that she had boyfriends to satisfy her mother.
She suffocated her two boys to death, one-year-old Othandwayo and six-year-old Amyoli.
Before murdering them, she informed the children of her plans to kill them.
She prayed with the boys, took turns to suffocate them to death with plastic bags and pillows and thereafter laid their bodies neatly on a bed.
Judge Belinda Hartle heard a day before murdering her boys, Labi murdered her two boys because she wanted to cause her mother grief as the mother had a close relationship with her grandchildren.
After Labi murdered her children she phoned her 42-year-old sister and told her what she had done.
The matter was reported to the police who found the bodies of the boys at their home.
“Judge Hartle the offences committed were “spine-chilling”, “horrific” and that “leniency for mercy’s sake would be wrong”, but she ruled that there were compelling circumstances present in the case to diviate from the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment. Judge Hartle stated that one of the reasons was that, in spite of the murders being premeditated in that she waited until she was alone with the children in the house to murder them, Labi cooperated with police from the onset and gave a detailed confession of events leading to the murders and the actual murders,” reads the statement.
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