On a chilly Monday morning in May 2012 neighbours saw Mpolokeng Nick Kolokoto throw a pair of takkies wrapped in a plastic bag into a pit toilet outside his home in Phake village in Mpumalanga.
This was shortly after the brutal murder of his elderly relative, Elizabeth Kolokoto. Elizabeth was assaulted, smashed against a wall and set alight in her home — all for R36 which she was robbed of.
Now, more than a decade later, Kolokoto was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Mpumalanga High Court.
He was also sentenced to six years for arson and five years for housebreaking and theft.
Mpumalanga police spokesperson Brig Selvy Mohlala said: “The accused had come from the local tavern when he planned to rob the old lady, who was living alone in the same street as him at Phake village.
He jumped over the fence to access the 83-year-old's property.
He broke her bedroom window and entered the house.
“He found the granny awake and demanded money from her. When the granny indicated she had no money the accused assaulted her, banged her against the wall until she fell down. He ransacked the house, only to leave with R36.
“He set paper alight and threw it under the granny's bed. The house burnt to ashes with the granny inside.
“The accused went home and changed his clothes. He burnt his clothes, which had bloodstains, inside the pit toilet enclosure,” Mohlala told TimesLIVE Premium.
The next morning he threw his bloodstained takkies, in a plastic bag, down a pit toilet. It was this act that was witnessed by suspicious neighbours who reported it to the police.
Despite this evidence pointing to him, Mpolokeng Kolokoto would only stand trial in June 2022.
The National Prosecuting Authority's adv Getrude Nkosi said this was partly due to outstanding DNA tests.
“It was removed from the court roll because the witnesses were unavailable at some stage and there was no eyewitness in this matter. So he was convicted on circumstantial evidence.
“Everything was there, it's just that they were waiting for the blood to be analysed. They couldn't draw blood from the deceased [due to her burnt state] to compare it with the blood from the takkies, thus they had to get a relative of the deceased to match the two.
“It was only after he was convicted that he said it was a mistake [killing the old lady],” Nkosi said.
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