Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - A South African mother has been accused of selling her two-year-old daughter to a 'witch doctor' after her child's corpse was found buried in a shallow grave.
On Monday, June 2, the victim's mother, Kuneuwe
Shalaba, appeared alongside 'shaman' Sebokoana Khounyana in court, charged
with the brutal murd£r of her toddler, who she allegedly sold for £3,100.
The six-year-old schoolgirl vanished outside her home in
Saldanha Bay, near Cape Town, in February last year and was never seen again.
Details emerging from the latest case have sparked fears
that up to a third of the over 1000 children murdered each year in South
Africa may be being targeted for body parts.
A major search effort was launched after Kuneuwe Shalaba,
33, reported her child missing.
At first, Shalaba claimed the child, Kutlwano, was a boy,
but later admitted she was a girl.
She said the toddler was snatched from her by three
kidnappers who sped off in a VW Golf near Johannesburg.
Police had been searching for the child for 6 months before investigators discovered that just two hours before they received the report, a large amount of money was paid into Shalaba's bank.
Mother-of-five Shalaba, who was struggling to make ends meet and feed her kids, received a year's money from a mystery man, which she could not explain when detectives confronted her.
Magistrates heard that she then not only confessed that she
had made up the kidnap story but had in fact led the police to believe they
were trying to find her 'son' when the missing toddler was in fact a girl.
Shalaba of Boipatong township, 55 miles south of
Johannesburg, had her phone calls analysed, which led police to a sangoma or
'witch doctor' working out of a nearby taxi rank.
National Police Authority spokesman Lumka Mahanjana said in
a statement that when arrested, the sangoma confessed to his part in the
disappearance of the girl and led officers to an abandoned mine.
After digging, police discovered a skeleton, which is
currently undergoing a post-mortem to determine the exact cause of death and if
any of her body parts had been harvested.
Shalaba, who had been charged with human trafficking, conspiracy to commit robbery, and making a false statement to police, was charged with premeditated murd£r when the body was discovered.
NPA spokeswoman Miss Mahanjana confirmed that the sangoma named as Sebokoana Khounyana, 50, had also been charged with premeditated murd£r and human trafficking along with the girl's mother.
In a media statement, it was stated that on November 10 last
year the mother took the toddler to see the sangoma and 'requested that he kill
her' because she was not happy with its gender.
It continued: 'She was tired of hiding the gender from her
family that the child was a girl. The mother then allegedly fed the baby poison
and after that the baby d!ed and the two buried her in a shallow grave.
'After investigations by the police the sangoma was arrested
on 29 May, 2025, and he subsequently made a confession and pointed out to the
police the place where the body of the child had been buried.
'In court today, the matter was postponed to 05 June 2025
for legal representation to be found for the sangoma. The state intends to
oppose his release on bail and previously denied the mother's release on bail'.
The alleged child killer is separated from her husband and
is known as a loan shark to locals who trade in buying and selling clothes, and
has two other children aged 6 and 9 being cared for by relatives.
The prosecution believes Kutlwano, who was dressed as a boy
and introduced to family and friends as a boy, was murdered on November 10 and
that the mother reported her kidnapped on November 13.
She was arrested on November 19 at home in Boipatong, 40
miles south of Johannesburg, and her daughter's body was found on May 29 buried
in a shallow grave in the nearby town of Randfontein.
Mother Shalaba is also accused of conspiracy to commit
robbery and making a false statement to the police.
Both accused killers, Shalaba and Khounyana, will appear
before the same magistrate on June 5.
0 Comments