MURDERED GIRLS DIED FOR BREAD AND WATER!

MBABANE – Bread and water. From biblical times, these basic commodities were a sign of life and if someone offered another person either of these two items, it was a gesture of caring.

However, these two commodities proved to be deadly bait for the two teenage girls whose decomposing bodies were found inside and in close proximity to a Matse homestead almost five days after they had gone missing.
The two 13-year-old pupils at Nkwalini primary school were raped and murdered, allegedly by one Colani Sihlongonyane, who was a gardener at the Matse homestead.
The gardener is presently at large.

The girls went missing last week Saturday and adverts were run in the media stating that they had been last seen in the company of Colani.
But how did he lure Timile Nhlabatsi and Sebenele Gama to his lair?

Timile’s mother Hloniphile Magagula yesterday opened up to the Times SUNDAY, despite her state of grief, and revealed that the suspected murderer lured her daughter out of her home under the guise that he wanted her to help him fix a water pipe.
“We share the same source of water and the pipe that channels the water into our homesteads sometimes disconnects, so Colani came to ask Timile to go and help him fix the pipe. Timile was busy doing her washing when Colani requested her assistance. She agreed to go and help him because we normally help each other in fixing the pipe. That’s how she left with him,” the distraught mother said.

Younger brother vigilant

She related that when Colani left with Timile, there was no elder person in the homestead except for the deceased teenager’s six-year- old brother.
Young as the brother is, he, however, proved to be vigilant because he is reported to have been the one who told the mother that Timile had left with Colani to fix the water pipe.

“When I returned home at around 2pm, I first thought she had gone to play with her friends but as time went by, I got worried and the six- year-old told me that she had left with Colani. I went to the Matse homestead to look for her but I was told that she had never set foot there and that Colani was also not around as he had left the day before after receiving his monthly pay,” she said.

She narrated that when she went to the Matse home, she came across Sebenele’s relatives who were also looking for their missing daughter and she learnt that she too was last seen with Colani.
She said they then began going around the area mobilising people to assist in looking for the two missing teenagers, but no one seemed to know their whereabouts.

“I got to learn from Sebenele’s grandmother that her granddaughter had been lured out of her homestead by Colani by telling her to come and fetch bread at the Matse homestead. It is known in the area that Matse gives out bread rations to residents on a daily basis and the children go to the homestead everyday to get the bread. So Sebenele thought he was going there like she normally does but this was to be a different day because she was never seen since then until she was found dead on Thursday,” the mother related.

girls trusted him

She said the two teenagers were familiar with Colani and trusted him because they would deal with him all the time as he gave bread to them everyday.
“With Timile, it was water and with Sebenele it was bread. My daughter was not part of the residents that go to Matse’s home to get bread every day so Colani had to use another trick to get her to go with him. The water pipe was the best bet because we rely on that water supply daily. If the pipe is not fixed, then we have no water hence Timile agreed to go and fix it,” she said.

The mother said they were shocked when one of the teenagers’ bodies was discovered in Colani’s one-room flat inside the Matse compound because they accessed the house on Sunday to look for the children and they found nothing.
“Even the place where my daughter’s body was found, we searched it with members of the community but did not find anything. My suspicion is that the children were killed somewhere else and then their bodies were brought to where they were found,” she said.  

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