Two women have appeared in the Durban High Court after being accused of poisoning and strangling 10-year-old best friends Njabulo Mankayi and Luyanda Msomi.
Almost a year after the alleged crime‚ Amahle Maliwa and her suspected cohort Liziwe Ngwayishe shuffled into the dock for the last hearing before their trial in May next year.
Maliwa had allegedly been engaged in a sordid affair with Mankayi's father and is alleged to have kidnapped the pair in retaliation after he ended their dalliance.
A lower court heard that the boys had been lured to Maliwa's shack in Clairwood‚ outside Durban‚ on the day they went missing‚ with the women forcing the boys to drink potassium permanganate.
“Thereafter they were led to two different areas of bush where they were strangled to death‚” investigating officer Marius van der Looi testified.
The young boys‚ considered inseparable friends‚ were last seen boarding a bus on their way home to Clairwood. Msomi's battered body was discovered days later in a thicket in the south Durban basin. Thereafter‚ Mankayi's sodden body was found dumped in a canal on Durban's Bluff.
The pair‚ who will remain in custody‚ face two charges each of murder‚ kidnapping and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
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