Who was Moses Sithole, the serial killer from Vosloorus who is currently in prison

Above all, he loved the company of young, beautiful women, drove a Mercedes-Benz sedan, dressed fashionably in beautiful, expensive clothes and owned a charity home for abused and needy children in his neighborhood, the municipality of Vosloorus.

In order to get the charity recognized by the local municipal authorities in the city of Ekurhuleni, he sought to establish links with like-minded children’s charities in the Boksburg CBD to gain support and recognition in the sector and enhance its image.

One of these was the Teddy Bear Clinic in the Boksburg CBD, where they welcomed him for his charity work and accepted him with open arms because of his commitment to the plight of the poor and homeless children in the township.

Tragically, the 26-year-old beautiful young female assistant who worked at the Teddy Bear Clinic and was from Vosloorus was eventually counted among the 38 women Sithole raped and murdered during his eight-year series of murders.

She was fascinated and thought into the world of the handsome and impeccably dressed young black man.

Sithole is in prison serving the 2,410-year sentence imposed on him by Judge Curlews at the Pretoria High Court on December 5, 1997.

The legacy of his brutal reign of terror will live on long after his death and the only question future generations will ask will be: “Who was Moses Sithole”?

Those who knew him from early childhood described the other side of this killer’s personality as that of a charming, handsome young man who loved children, treated his wife and daughter with love and compassion, and showed care and kindness to those in need – especially the people who needed him. women he would spend nearly a decade in remote open fields, seeking to rape and murder.

The more one delves into Sithole’s family past, the more vague and obscure their history and origins become entangled in mystery.

Sithole is the fourth child of Zimbabwean Simon Tangawira Sithole and his wife Sophie Mnisi, probably from KwaZulu-Natal.

From childhood, his life and that of his brothers and sisters seemed destined for hardship and misfortune; selected him to live a destructive life of violence and murder that led to the destruction of the lives of his innocent victims and his own.

Sithole was just two years old when their father died suddenly of an unknown illness leaving Sophie, a stay-at-home mother, and the children destitute with not much.

The young mother of five children was unemployed and had no prospect of a steady income. She was destitute and depressed.

Perhaps Sophie, after carefully considering her dire situation, depressed by the death of her husband and having to face life as a widow, unable to support herself and her children, chose a rather desperate measure to deal with her immediate problem to deal with: her starving four young fatherless children. children.

One weekday morning she woke the boys up early, bundled them up with whatever scraps of clothing they could carry and took them to the Vosloorus police station, where she dumped them in a corner of the public car park.

But before she left them, she gave everyone a stern warning not to reveal her name or where she lives to the police or anyone else who might ask. The boys watched their mother walk away from them and disappear into the crowd.

The boys were later removed from the police station and taken to a nearby safe place before being taken to an orphanage in DingaanStad in KwaZulu-Natal.

According to Sithole, his life in Dingaanstad turned into the sexual predator he became.

He described the rampant sexual abuse in KZN combined with other immoral activities by his colleagues at the ‘home’, which eventually forced him to leave the institution and find his way back to the family home in Vosloorus.

When he finally found his way to what was his childhood home, strangers met the young Sithole whom he did not recognize.

They told him that they were now the new owners of the house that once belonged to his parents. They bought the property from a woman who could possibly be their mother, but no one could tell him where his mother had disappeared.

He later learned that poverty, hunger and desperation had forced his mother to sell their home to the family and leave. No one knew where Sophie had moved to.

Young and desperate for a place to stay, Sithole took refuge with a male relative who owned a house in another part of Vosloorus. Later, Sithole met and fell in love with a local woman, and the couple had a daughter together.

When the relative he was staying with became ill and returned to Venda to recover, he left Sithole to look after the house. Soon the young Sithole stole the hearts of the locals and proved to be a resourceful member of the community.

In addition to odd jobs in the neighborhood to earn a living, he did temporary work in factories around Germiston, Boksburg and Benoni. No one knows why the sick relative never returned from Venda, but Sithole sold the house and pocketed the money.

He continued contact with his daughter’s mother and visited regularly with gifts and new clothes.

An avid dresser, Sithole was known as an impeccable fashionista, with a great taste for good clothes and the latest pair of fashionable shoes.

Micki Pistorius, author of the book Strangers on the Street – Serial Homicids in South Africa, describes Sithole’s fashion taste as expensive and conspicuous. This is a testament to the magnetic attraction to his choice of victims: beautiful young black women between the ages of 19 and 45.

It was around 1987 that Sithole would put his new skills and his new passion to the test: luring women off the streets to his love quarters in remote open fields around Geldenhuis near Germiston, Boksburg, Vosloorus, Soweto, Attridgevlle, Cleveland and Benoni.

His first rape victim was a 38-year-old small, married housewife from Vosloorus who was looking for a job on the morning of September 14, 1987.