Boy, 7, finds his mother’s dead body

A child of seven yesterday found his mother’s naked body in a pit latrine.

Police believe Khanyisa James, 24, a mother of three children aged seven, four and seven months, was raped and then strangled with someone’s bare hands.

Eastern Cape paramedics declared her dead on the scene at about 10am yesterday. James had no visible wounds and her back lay against the toilet seat behind her home in Old Payne location outside Mthatha.

The little boy had gone to the toilet to throw away bath water when he came across the horrific sight.

Two men from nearby houses were taken in for questioning.

Mthatha police were not available for comment but police investigators at the scene believed the killers jumped over the fence at the corner of the yard, where footprints matching one suspect’s pair of sandals were found. A second suspect had scratch marks on his face and neck.

A group of women identified the victim before her body was taken away in a forensic mortuary van.

The victim’s grandmother Thandiwe, who owns a shebeen, said her granddaughter had been in in a fight with some youths she was drinking with just hours before the discovery.

The shebeen is on the same property where the family live.

“They stopped fighting and I locked her in her room so that she could be with her little girl. But somehow she went out again and left her toddler with a tenant in the backyard,” said Thandiwe.

She said James had helped out at the tavern. “There are young men who push the door and force her to open at night. They don’t even want to see her,” she said.

Speaking to the Daily Dispatch inside her home where she was sitting with a group of women, Thandiwe said she would now have to raise her three great-grandchildren.

“The father of the two older children was shot dead in Mthatha a few years ago and the father of the toddler is a student in East London.

“He is also orphaned and unemployed, so he is as good as absent.”

Shocked neighbours milled around the house yesterday. They said the shebeen was open late. Some said it was a haven for thugs who preyed on people arriving late from work.

One neighbour said a number of patrons had been stabbed over the past few years.

“Many people have stopped using this street because they get robbed by youngsters who drink here.

“I’m not saying they must shut it down but at least by 8pm they should close,” she said.

Social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi condemned the killing.

Shebeens were a form of survival for many unemployed families but they had to comply with the law, she said. “This is where women become vulnerable, whether they own the shebeen or are customers.”