South African women accused of plotting mother’s killing to claim funeral insurance
Two daughters in South Africa are on trial over allegations they helped kill their mother so a R40,000 funeral policy could be claimed. The victim’s
Two daughters in South Africa are on trial over allegations they helped kill their mother so a R40,000 funeral policy could be claimed. The victim’s body was then taken to railway tracks in an apparent attempt to make the death look like a train accident.
Family member says she warned her mother
The case was heard on Tuesday at the Mbombela High Court in Mpumalanga, where Bathabile Mthunywa, 39, her neighbour Nombuso Ndwandwa, 41, and Steen Mashakeng, 36, face charges in the killing of 62-year-old Wanter Dlamini. Prosecutors say the accused acted with a common purpose to murder Dlamini and cash in the insurance policy registered in her name without her knowledge.
One of Dlamini’s children, Bessie van Der Merwe, told the court she begged her mother not to go to the place where she was raped and strangled. The court heard that Dlamini had lost her cellphone the day before she died, and that the next day her daughter Nonhlanhla Mthunywa called her to fetch it from Mashakeng’s house.
Van Der Merwe’s account pointed to a tightly staged sequence. After the killing, she said, the body was transported to a railway line so a train could run over it.
Plea deal splits the case
Mashakeng is the boyfriend of Nonhlanhla Mthunywa, who entered a plea agreement with the state and is now serving a 20-year sentence. Court filings and testimony indicate the state is treating the alleged plot as a coordinated murder arranged around the insurance payout.
The trial comes as courts in different countries keep seeing family-linked murder cases tied to money, property or insurance, with investigators often left to untangle staged accidents from violence hidden inside the home. Here, prosecutors say the central issue is simple: who planned the killing, and who stood to gain from it.
The murder of Dlamini was on Jan. 5, 2020. The insurance policy at the center of the case was worth R40,000.
