A woman who was told in a dream to travel to Soweto to train as a sangoma spent a weekend wandering around with a bundle in her arms asking people to pray for it.
The bundle turned out to be the body of her two-year-old daughter, who she now stands accused of stabbing to death and nearly decapitating.
“Stantia Lee-Ann Tshitsi has already appeared in the Roodepoort magistrate's court. There is an application before the court that she must be sent for psychiatric observation. This application will be heard on November 14. Until then she will remain in custody,” Phindi Louw-Mjonondwane, the National Prosecuting Authority's spokesperson for Gauteng, told TimesLIVE Premium.
While police confirmed her arrest on August 28, Gauteng spokesperson Col Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said she could not comment further.
The community of Tshepisong in Soweto, where the tragedy played out, was still reeling from what they witnessed.
“She came here on Saturday August 26 with another woman. Tshitsi told me her ancestors ordered her in a dream to come to us and train as a sangoma,” Ayanda Isaac Sibisi, a sangoma in the Shembe Church in Tshepisong, told TimesLIVE Premium.
“Even now, knowing what happened, if I look back there was nothing strange about her. I would never have expected her to do such a cruel thing.”
Sibisi does not do sangoma training on Saturdays and told the woman she had to return on Monday.
“She came back later that day. My father owns the house where we have our church. When Tshitsi returned, she was carrying a bundle that looked like a large pillow. She asked my father to pray on the pillow and wanted to leave it in the house.”
His father sent the woman on her way. On the Monday, Tshitsi walked to a house where one of Sibisi’s brothers stays.
“She wanted to leave the pillow there but my brother refused. She then asked him to help her carry it back to my indumba [house of his ancestors],” Sibisi said.
He was asleep in his mother’s house at the time.
“I woke up and immediately felt something was not right and I rushed to my indumba. When I arrived here I saw the bag lying where you are sitting now. I opened it and this tiny little child slid out like a doll and fell on the floor.”
Sibisi shuddered. “It was horrible. Her head was almost entirely removed.”
He called the police.
“Word started spreading and other community members started arriving before the police. They were very angry and thought we were the ones who hurt the little girl. They threatened to harm us and burn our church.”
Tshitsi was on the property when police arrived after 5pm.
“She became hysterical and screamed that she killed her baby. She shouted that she put a cloth over the baby’s mouth and that she remembers stabbing her child many times in her head, but not that she tried to cut her head off,” Sibisi said.
Another member of the Shembe congregation, Nonhlanhla Manana, took Tshitsi under her wing that weekend.
“On that Saturday she had nowhere to go. I told her she could sleep at my house. I was lying on my bed later that evening when she walked into the room and put the baby on the bed. She then took a continental pillow and put it over her face to smother her,” said Manana, still reeling from shock.
“I jumped up and asked her what she was doing and it was almost as if she woke up with a shock. Tshitsi told me she sometimes put a pillow on her daughter so it would feel like she was holding the child.
“When she was sitting her legs had a nervous jump [twitch]. She never stopped the jumping movement.”
She asked Tshitsi if she was OK. “She said she was nervous because her forefathers told her in a dream that we were going to kill her. Why would we do that? We did not know her at all.”
Manana said Tshitsi told her she and her child came from the Eastern Cape.
“She did not say from which town or area. I am very sad about this thing. The little girl was such a beautiful child.”
Hanru Niemand, a clinical psychologist from Cape Town, said he was hesitant to comment on Tshitsi's mental health because he had not examined her himself but she appeared to have suffered from a mental disorder.
The delay in her being sent for observation by the courts is not strange because of a lack of space.
“It is a process and these kinds of facilities sometimes have limited space,” Niemand said.
“Without examining her myself it is difficult to say too much, but in these kinds of infanticides, the killer is seldom a psychopath or garden-variety criminal. This woman appears to be suffering from some serious psychiatric disorders.”
According to the SA Journal of Psychiatry, 75% of people with common mental disorders in SA do not receive any treatment.
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