Young mother Sindiswe Ngcobo, 25, who was shot dead execution-style by a group of hijackers, was buried on Saturday.
|||Durban - Young mother Sindiswe Ngcobo, 25, who was shot dead execution-style by a group of hijackers, was buried yesterday.
Her bullet-riddled, partly decomposed body was found along with that of her partner, an off-duty policeman and taxi driver Xolani Kwela, 26.
They had been kidnapped near KwaNdengesi and their bodies dumped on the side of the road near a Greytown plantation earlier this month.
A box of uneaten KFC and a carton of Liqui-Fruit were left next to their bodies.
Police have arrested two suspects, one of whom is a police officer.
Their funerals were held on Saturday – Ngcobo’s in KwaNdengezi and Kwela’s in KwaSanti, outside Pinetown.
At Ngcobo’s emotionally charged service, friends and relatives were inconsolable, questioning the brutality of her killing.
Ngcobo’s family, who could not afford the funeral costs, were assisted by deputy speaker of the provincial legislature Mtholephi Mthimkhulu. He secured a donation from a retail store to assist with the arrangements.
Speaking at the funeral, he decried the “sick society we live in”. “When is this animal inside us going to stop? Why such a painful death for Sindi?”
Mthimkhulu said he was disturbed that one of the suspects arrested was a police officer. “These are people who are supposed to protect us. I must also point out that suspects are innocent until proven otherwise,” he said.
Ngcobo’s mother Phumzile supports the family by collecting paper, plastic and metal for recycling.
“We are shattered to lose such a person,” said Ngcobo’s sister Hlengiwe. “Now her young son Sambulo has been robbed of his mother.”
On July 8, Ngcobo boarded the taxi after work and was on her way home. She had started a new job in Ballito. Kwela had dropped off all the passengers except Ngcobo when the gunmen attacked.
A timber worker near Greytown came across the bodies and alerted her colleagues, who then called the police.
Ngcobo sustained several bullet wounds.
“What kind of horrible people do these things? Sindi just happened to be in the wrong taxi at the wrong time,” said Hlengiwe.
Four people were initially arrested, but two, one of them a police officer, are now facing hijacking, kidnapping and murder charges, said provincial police spokesman Colonel Jay Naicker.
Sunday Tribune