Women are generally considered to be the softer sex and have a supposedly higher sense of morality, which makes them better able to distinguish between right and wrong. Yet in South Africa, more and more women are being convicted of murdering their partners. This week, a woman was released on bail after stabbing her partner in the chest on Valentine’s Day. North Gauteng National Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Lumka Mahanjana confirmed that the North Pretoria District Court has awarded Natasha Beyers a bail of R3,000. Beyers is charged with murder for killing the father of her seven-year-old son. She allegedly got into a fight with…
Women are generally considered to be the softer sex and have a supposedly higher sense of morality, which makes them better able to distinguish between right and wrong.
Yet in South Africa, more and more women are being convicted of murdering their partners.
This week, a woman was released on bail after stabbing her partner in the chest on Valentine’s Day. National Prosecutor North Gauteng spokesman Lumka Mahanjana confirmed that the Pretoria North District Court has awarded Natasha Beyers R3,000 bail.
Beyers is charged with murder for killing the father of her seven-year-old son. She allegedly got into an argument with her partner over a cigarette before stabbing him with a knife.
Mahanjana said the case has been postponed to March 24 for further investigation. A criminologist, prof.dr. Anni Hesselink, said that women normally have a higher degree of self-control than men. Hesselink said research found that not all female killers weighed the costs, such as the loss of the breadwinner, the father of their children, their husband or subsequent jail time.
“Situational, environmental and social disorders play an integral role in the lives of the women who commit murders,” she added.
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Hesselink said external factors included being trapped in dysfunctional family life, being exposed to violence in childhood and adulthood, child abuse, abandonment, rejection, poor intimate ties, limited education, financial stress, isolation and inadequate support structures.
Hesselink said research showed that many women killed men who abused them. But not all women who killed others were motivated by their immediate circumstances. This week Karel Derek Sait, Steven James Damon and Zurenah Smit returned to the Western Cape Supreme Court after being charged with the murder of noted wealthy Stellenbosch businessman and farmer Wynand Stephanus Smit.
The trio were also charged with aggravated theft, theft, forgery, uttering, illegal possession of firearms and illegal possession of ammunition. In November, the Western Cape Supreme Court convicted Pastor Melisizwe Monqo, his wife Siphosihle Pamba and hit man Phumlani Qhusheka on charges of kidnapping, aggravated theft and the murder of Hlompho Koloi.
Monqo was convicted on 26 charges in Koloi’s murder, including theft with aggravated circumstances, assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm, burglary with intent to commit murder, illegal possession of a firearm, illegal possession of ammunition and 13 counts of fraud.
Pamba was convicted on 24 counts, as was her husband, but received a lighter sentence of 20 years in prison for being abused and forced to participate in the crimes.
Also in November last year, Suretha Brits, accused of masterminding the murder of her hotelier husband Leon Brits of Pofadder in the Northern Cape, was sentenced to 25 years of direct prison terms for murder and 15 years for aggravated theft.
Last December, the Supreme Court in Pretoria sentenced Elenah Mashaba, 42, of Modderspruit, UK, to one life sentence for the first degree murder of her 43-year-old Mozambican husband, Solomon Mashaba. Mashaba, who shared her husband with five other women, offered two men R5,000 to kill her husband.
Professor Jaco Barkhuizen, head of the criminology department at the University of Limpopo, said women who were psychopaths and capable of killing were not as rare as people might think.
The murders Marinda Steyn committed in Krugersdorp may have been motivated by money or the occult.
“It’s like a Charles Manson-type motivational control, especially given the cult behavior, the control and dominance,” he said.
Manson was an American criminal who led the Manson Family, a cult in California in the late 1960s. Some of the members committed a series of nine murders in four locations in July and August 1969.
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Criminologist Prof. Dr. Dup Louw, who has worked with killers for the past 30 years, said there was no “type” of female killer.
“It has been proven that what we see on TV and in movies from so-called profilers is not reliable,” he said.
Louw said the golden rule, that every person’s psychology is unique, also applied to murderers.
“There were murderers with a history of committing a crime and those who were first-time offenders,” he said.
However, he said, looking at the average male killers, they tended to have a history of committing crimes, while female killers were more likely to be first-time offenders.
He said this was especially true given the cases of abused women murdering abusers. “They usually feel trapped and otherwise can’t escape.”
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