Mother begs for forgiveness

THE mother who led a frantic search for her "missing" child on the Cape Flats before telling police she killed him herself, has begged forgiveness.

Zulpha Jacobs told her sister, Mishqah Hendricks, that she was roughed up this week by women inmates at Pollsmoor Prison.

Family and friends described Jacobs as a troubled soul whose life started crumbling when she was 16 after she fell pregnant and dropped out of school. The father abandoned her and she suffered a miscarriage.

Hendricks - who is married to Moroka Swallows soccer player Ashraf Hendricks - visited her in prison on Thursday. "She started to cry when she saw me. She assumed I would have nothing more to do with her after what she did," said Hendricks. "She asked for touba - forgiveness - and I said Allah maaf - God forgive."

Jacobs, 30, was remanded in custody after appearing in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate's Court on Tuesday. She will appear again tomorrow.

"She told me that inmates ripped her prayer mat out from under her and told her it's too late for her to start praying," said Hendricks.

The dead boy, Taariq, 2, was reported missing on Thursday December 28 while shopping with Jacobs in Mitchells Plain. CCTV footage later revealed he had not been there.

Jacobs allegedly confessed two days later after Taariq's body was found in a shallow grave. An autopsy indicated he had suffocated.

Police are now probing the death of Jacobs's two other children.

Just before Taariq died, he was living with his mother in a friend's Wendy house. She told friends that her husband, Walied, and in-laws had thrown her out of their home.

But Walied's sister, Tawgheeda Davids, denied her brother had thrown Jacobs out.

"She walked out about four months ago. They had a troubled marriage. I took her in [a few years ago] after she told me she had nowhere to go and was planning to sleep at a train station."