OMPHITLHETSE MOOKI
‘I have just slaughtered a cow.” This is how a Soweto man who had allegedly just raped, stabbed and poured boiling water over his girlfriend’s body explained blood spatters on his clothing.
But police who spotted the man while patrolling streets of Dobsonville on Saturday night arrived at his Green Village shack to find the woman’s naked, bloodied body slumped on the bed, with broken beer bottles scattered on the floor.
Paul Modimola, a friend drinking with Ouma Masilela and her boyfriend earlier in the day, said yesterday that the man, whose name is known to The Star, arrived at his house at around 10pm, telling him “this person is dying on me”.
“I rushed to his shack and Ouma was lying there naked. Skin on her thighs was peeling off, as if she had been burnt. She was pale. I touched her to see if she was alive, but she was dead,” said Modimola.
As distraught friends and relatives gathered at the Masilela family home in Emndeni yesterday, it was evident the man Masilela started dating in September was “an abusive control freak”.
Text messages on her phone indicated the man had begged her to take him back after one of their many break-ups, failing which he was going to end his life.
“He was abusive. He would hit her against walls, break her stuff and monitor her phone. Every time she left him, he would send text messages threatening to end his life,” said Masilela’s friend, Neliswa Radebe.
In two messages the man sent on January 9, he begged Masilela to take him back, then said “ manje ngiyazibulala(I’m now killing myself), bye love. Ouma goodbye my love, I’ll see you in heaven”.
Other texts were sent on February 2. In those, the man told Masilela she was a doubting Thomas who “wants to believe by seeing”, and told her she would land in a wheelchair.
But the message sent after this one was more apologetic, with the man begging Masilela to “please come back”.
Friends said Masilela returned to the man’s place on Saturday after he convinced one of her friends to bring her over as he was hosting a party.
“He killed my daughter like she was a criminal,” cried Masilela’s mother Elizabeth.
Warrant officer Kay Makhubela said a 36-year-old man would appear in court this week.