He's been convicted.
But that doesn't change the fact that murderer and rapist Sifiso Mkhwanazi robbed countless souls of people they loved.
The 21-year-old was yesterday found guilty on six counts of murder, six counts of rape, defeating the ends of justice, one count of possession of ammunition, possession of an illegal firearm and one count of theft by the Johannesburg High Court sitting at Palm Ridge Magistrates Court.
Now he must go to Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital in the West Rand after Judge Cassim Moosa ruled that he needed to be admitted to the institution.
Read more | Sex worker took advantage of me at age 18, says Sifiso Mkhwanazi who’s accused of killing 6 women
It's cold comfort for the loved ones of the deceased whose jobs as sex workers put their lives at risk.
Outside court, the youngest daughter of one of the deceased and Sifiso’s first victim, Chihota Nyarai, told Drum that she missed school so that she could be present in court for the judgment to see whether justice prevails.
She says they found out that her mom is one of the sex workers whose body was discovered when the police found a dead body at the scrap yard owned by Sifiso Mkhwanazi’s father.
Sifiso held her in an arm choke and once she was unconscious, covered her face and neck with a blue cloth and tied the belt over the cloth on her neck. He then wrapped the corpse with a duvet and concealed it in a white panel van that was parked outside in the yard of the premises.
“We had been searching for her," the teenager tells Drum.
"We went to where she works and then we received a call that there were bodies that had been found and we should come and check if she was amongst them.
She says at first, they didn’t want to believe that there was a possibility that her body could be amongst the six bodies because the last time they spoke to her, she told them that she was coming back home.
“She told us that she was coming home and didn’t think that she would die. We were not aware of the kind of job she was doing.
“All five of the siblings only found out when they got the DNA results of the discovered bodies. Last year we lost one of our siblings, the pain we have experienced is indescribable. We can’t even understand how we feel because she was a breadwinner and a single parent."
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The Judge had to decide if the sex between Sifiso and the sex workers was consensual or not and he ruled that it was rape.
Speaking to Drum outside the courtroom yesterday, psychologist Dr Gerard Labaschagne revealed he had been asked to be an advisor for Legal Aid on this case, but he wasn’t called as a witness and he says he can’t reveal all his findings.
“He killed six people, sex workers in this case there is a sexual element. That is common, although killing six sex workers is not, but the sexual element in our South African serial murders is common.
“The important thing that the judge said is that these are premeditated murders, the impact on that is that he is facing life imprisonment for each of the murders.”
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane says, following a thorough investigation and a rigorous legal process, justice has been served.
