Christmas is the worst day of the year for 19-year-old Tshifhiwa Puswe.
It is the day her mother, Aluwani, was stabbed to death, and reminds her how badly the justice system failed her.
The killer, Nyadzeni Tshigemane, spent just five years in jail, in part because of the judge's controversial ruling in which he empathised with Tshigemane because Aluwani had grabbed him by the genitals before he plunged a knife into her seven times on December 25 2006.
After a lengthy legal battle, the NPA conceded in June in an out-of-court settlement that it was "100% liable" in the matter and agreed to pay damages to Tshifhiwa, which have yet to be determined. Tshifhiwa's lawyers are demanding R730,000.
According to court transcripts, Acting Judge Piet Ebersohn said during the trial in the High Court in Thohoyandou, Limpopo: "To grab a man by his private parts is regarded in culture circles as a very offensive thing to do, especially if it is done by a woman to a man ... She was holding on to his private parts. He took out the knife and he stabbed her, almost an automatic reaction."
Tshigemane was "of good material" and "a good member of society", Ebersohn said. "It is clear from the evidence that the accused was not the person who instigated or started the trouble but it was the deceased."
Adding insult to injury, prosecutor DM Nkgapele failed to tell Ebersohn that Tshigemane had been charged with assaulting and raping Aluwani seven months before, and had allegedly been harassing and tormenting her.
Nkgapele also did not call any witnesses to testify how Tshigemane had repeatedly threatened to kill Aluwani and burn her house down, forcing her to move in to her aunt's house.
Ebersohn sentenced Tshigemane to 18 years, eight of which were suspended for five years. Tshigemane was released from jail in June 2012 after serving five years and three months.
Tshifhiwa sued the NPA and the ministers of justice and police for negligence for "failing" to prevent her mother's death.
Law firm Webber Wentzel, acting on her behalf, said the NPA had failed to request "special" bail conditions, including a restraining order, for Tshigemane after he allegedly raped Aluwani in May 2006.
In the months following the alleged rape, 26-year-old Aluwani informed the police several times of the repeated threats he made against her life, but nothing was done.Fiona Nicholson, programme director of the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme, which assisted Aluwani after the alleged rape and helped Tshifhiwa get legal representation, said the trial had been a "fiasco" and "an absolute travesty of justice".
She said the incompetence of the prosecutor had been obvious, even to a lay person, yet Ebersohn never challenged him, or questioned why no witnesses were called.
"Instead, he believed every word spoken by the defendant and allowed him to totally trash the character of the deceased with impunity.
"The judge's overt empathy for the accused was nauseating to witness. Without any evidence being presented, and based on the word of a confessed murderer, the judge concluded that the accused was a 'good' and 'productive' member of society."
Nathi Mncube, spokesman for the office of the chief justice, said he had noted Ebersohn's comments in the judgment, but the office did not comment on such remarks...