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Conwell Mongezi Chauke has been sentenced to life and six years in prison for the murder and kidnapping of 11-year-old Kgothatso Tshabalala. He stabbed her 66 times as a demonstration of anger towards her mother for rejecting his advances. Image: News24
(The Post News)- Conwell Mongezi Chauke, a 34-year-old man from Pretoria who kidnapped and killed an 11-year-old girl by stabbing her 66 times after her mother refused his advances, has been sentenced to life and six years in prison by the Pretoria High Court.
The court ordered Chauke to serve his sentences concurrently, and he was also deemed unfit to possess a firearm.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson, Lumka Mahanjana, stated that Kgothatso Tshabalala was murdered on December 29, 2020, after her mother received threatening calls from Chauke. Chauke and the deceased’s mother belonged to the same prayer group.
Furthermore, Mahanjana said Chauke expressed his frustrations over the phone, claiming that Tshabalala’s mother was “taking him for a fool” after she refused to meet with him the day before as he wanted to develop a romantic relationship with her. Later that day, Chauke went to Mamelodi East, where Tshabalala and her mother lived; when he arrived, she was at a neighbor’s house playing with her younger sister.
Chauke lured her in by pretending he needed to get his belongings from Tshabalala’s house, and when they entered her home, he then stabbed her 66 times before covering her lifeless body with linen on top of her bed and running away from the scene. Her dead body was discovered by the neighbors when they went to look for her inside her house because they could not find her anywhere.
He has been in custody since he turned himself in at the Lyttleton Police Station on December 31, 2020. Chauke pleaded guilty to the murder charge, denied kidnapping Tshabalala, and told the court that his actions were driven by the anger he felt towards Tshabalala’s mother. Despite his denial of kidnapping accusations, the state was able to prove that Tshabalala was lured and kidnapped.
When imposing the punishment, Judge Jacobus Johannes Strijdom, in accord with the state, stated that Chauke’s conviction was for a serious offense that violated Tshabalala’s fundamental right to life, and that stabbing a child 66 times, brutally, demonstrated that he is a threat to society.
Judge Strijdom further stated that the court found that there were significant and compelling reasons to deviate from the stipulated minimum sentence since the interest of justice exceeded his circumstances.                                                     Â
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