Scores of women, consisting of women’s rights advocacy groups, friends and colleagues, demonstrated outside the Boksburg Magistrate’s Court as the Parkrand man who has been charged with murdering his wife appeared in court, on December 2.
Dressed in black and blue, the placard-waving crowd, mainly members of Women on the Front Row and other advocacy groups, assembled in the parking lot at the entrance to the court and chanted in a bid to oppose bail for the accused in the murder of 43-year-old Nhlanhla Prudence Mphahlele.
According to the Boksburg police spokesperson, Const Ntsako Ledwaba, police initially registered an inquest docket after the murder accused told the police that he found his wife drowned in the bathtub in their home in Parkrand on November 17.
Someone apparently picked up that something was amiss and advised the detectives to carry out a thorough investigation into the cause of the woman’s death.
Further investigation revealed that the cause of death was not drowning, but strangulation. The police changed the case from that of drowning to murder and subsequently arrested the husband and charged him with murder.
He appeared in court on December 2, where the matter was postponed to December 9.
It also, according to the police, emerged that before the woman’s demise the couple had a quarrel.
“The husband told our members [the police] that after the quarrel the woman told him that she was going to take a bath.
“The man claimed that after the wife took too long to come out of the bathroom, he went to look for her and found that the bathroom door was locked. He forced it open and discovered the woman had died of drowning. Yet, the water was too little for an adult to drown in,” said Ledwaba.
Dimpo Mpela, a leader of the protesting members of Women on the Front Row, said they will not rest until justice is served for the slain former Eskom Megawatt Park employee.
“We stand with the family of Prudence. We support them and we will be here every time the killer appears in court,” said Mpela.
Some of the protesters’ placards read “Stop killing” and “Justice for Nhlanhla”, others read “Women on the Front Row is against GBV”.
Elizabeth Gadebe, the mother of the slain woman, said there was no reason for her beloved daughter to have been killed the way that she was, and finds it hard to come to terms with the loss.
“I can’t even fall asleep as I’m always thinking about what happened to my daughter.
“As a family, we were not even given the opportunity to mourn as we were being asked not to do this do that, stop this and as I’m speaking to you now there is a case against me for burying my daughter,” said the mother.
Ledwaba confirmed the contempt of court case against the family, saying the husband’s family obtained a court order to stop the funeral, but the Gadebe family had, after the post-mortem was done, buried their loved one on November 23.
The family revealed that Mphahlele’s relationship was an abusive one, saying the deceased had on many occasions complained that she suffered repeated violence from her partner.
“There was a time where my daughter was treated in hospital after the husband beat her. I eventually asked her to consider leaving the abusive marriage and I suspect that he decided to kill her when she told him that she was leaving,” said Gadebe.
