Mxolisi Nodangala could not bear to look at the body of his one-year-old son Sibongakonke after he was discovered murdered in an open grassy area at the end of a cul de sac in Phoenix.
A sombre Nodangala was accompanied by his mother, Ntombizanele Nodangala, and her sister, Julie Mathethidube, to the Verulam Magistrate's Court on Monday where the man arrested for the death of his son made his first appearance.
"I didn’t even have the strength to see where they had dumped him because I knew that I would not be able to live with that image," Nodangala told TimesLIVE before the court proceedings.
According to court documents, Thembelani Mtengwane allegedly broke into the home where the boy was staying with his mother and took him on March 31 while the mother was out.
Mtengwana was arrested in the Eastern Cape on Friday after the boy's body was discovered. He had been reported missing from the Amaoti area near Phoenix a few days before his body was found.