After initially pleading not guilty to two counts of rape and the murder of a five-year-old girl, Ricardo Gysman was found guilty as charged in the Gqeberha high court on Wednesday.
A “cold-hearted” East London gardener who showed no remorse after admitting to strangling an 83-year-old pensioner with an electric cord and bashing her with an iron rod in August 2021, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Relatives of five victims who lost their lives in an inferno set by a “selfish” Eastern Cape man were left content after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for each murder on Thursday. Masixole Ndzube, 33, cut a stoic figure in the dock as judge Bulelwa Pakati meted out the sentence. The fire on March 30 2020 claimed the lives of Nobesuthu Mpitimpiti, her daughters Kulakazi and Bathandwa, her grandson Yololwam, a six-month-old child of Bathandwa’s, and local pastor Samkelo Mdingane at.
A day before the incident, Masixole Ndzube had travelled 50km to the nearest town of Fort Beaufort to buy five litres of petrol, to set the house on fire.