Bulawayo man kills wife, hangs himself

A Bulawayo man brutally attacked his wife by allegedly stabbing her with a knife, hanged the body before he hanged himself on the roof truss of their house in a suspected domestic dispute.

The man identified as Mr B M Ndebele who was a cross border transporter known as malayitsha and his wife Dumazile Dube (29), who worked at a restaurant in South Africa, are said to have had a history of numerous domestic disputes.

Bulawayo police spokesperson, Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo, confirmed the incident that happened on Friday last week.

“We are handling a case where two bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a roof at their residence in Luveve. The two were husband and wife and preliminary investigations indicate that they had a domestic dispute,’’ said Insp Moyo.

According to a relative of the deceased couple, Mrs Gladys Dube, who was at the couple’s Luveve home, Ndebele is alleged to have had a girlfriend whom his father knew and was suspected to be the source of the friction.

“In September last year, the couple decided to sell a vehicle and wanted to buy a new one. The wife is said to have contributed R10 000 from her savings towards the purchase.

After they purchased the car Dumazile had a fight with her husband over the girlfriend and he beat her up and left her for dead in a bush where she was found by a passerby who took her to hospital. She was admitted to hospital from October to about 19 December last year,’’ said Mrs Dube.

The relative said when she was discharged she came to Zimbabwe just before the Christmas holiday to visit her parents and tell them of her intention to separate with the husband.

Mrs Dube said at the same time Dumazile discovered that the car they had purchased in her name was changed to Ndebele’s fathers’ name without her knowledge, fuelling more quarrels.

Ms Febbie Msipha, who used to share the same house with the couple in Zimbabwe, said she received a phone call from Ndebele asking her when she will be leaving for the holidays but says she was suspicious of his concern.

“He called me asking when I will leave for the rural areas and when I will return but I got suspicious of his concern but dismissed that and I told him I will be back on 7 January. He then came to Zimbabwe on 3 January on Thursday and found me there,’’ said Ms Msipha.

She said when Ndebele arrived his wife was at a relative’s house and he followed her. She said they returned at about 7pm with their daughter who is five years old. During that same night she said she heard the child crying for a long time and thought they had started fighting.

“I started coughing and moving things around so that in the event that they were fighting they would stop. The child stopped crying subsequently and we went back to sleep,’’ added Ms Msipha.

The next morning Ms Msipha noticed that Dumazile hadn’t woken up at about 9am and sent their child with a plate of cooked maize cobs to her. Dumazile then explained that she was not well and needed someone to hire to wash her clothes. Ms Msipa then offered to go and find a helper at about 3pm that same day.

“As I was looking for a person to wash her clothes, two children followed me and told me that NaSheron (Dumazile) and her husband had died. I could not believe it and came back to the house to confirm,’’ she said.

Before their death it is alleged that the couple went to the wife’s father to solve their dispute which resulted in them deciding to separate.

While they were there, Ndebele said he wanted to get his few belongings that were at their home and Dumazile went with him as she wanted to collect bus fare for her father who wanted to go back to Matopo.

“A relative warned us that the couple should not go to their lodgings together as he had once beaten her up in South Africa and was bound to do the same again, but people dismissed it. If only we had listened maybe we would be singing a different song today,’’ added Dube.

Ndebele is alleged to have killed his wife by stabbing her and hanging the body to conceal the evidence and he did this in full view of their daughter.

However, the vehicle that the two had purchased was intercepted at the Beitbridge border post by police after receiving a tip-off that the car had been registered in a wrong person’s name.

Some relatives that were gathered at the Luveve home said they reported a case at Luveve Police Station that there were disputes between the couple and wanted police to intervene but there was no co-operation

“We went to report seeking a peace order but the police did not give us saying nothing bad was going to happen to her. Ndebele had received a peace order against him issued in South Africa. So we are disappointed in the police officers at Luveve who refused to assist, maybe she would have survived if Ndebele had a peace order,’’ said Dube.

The suburb of Luveve was engulfed in sadness as people were still trying to come to terms with the ordeal. Sunday News