Man to hang for rape, murder

When they got to his homestead they found two of his friends. He invited her to a three-roomed house so that she could see the maize she had come to collect.
He ordered one of his friends to leave his homestead after they had gone into the house. Ndlovu proposed love to her but she turned down his proposal.
He later grabbed her and pushed her onto a sofa and pulled down her track suit bottom and cut her panties on both sides using an Okapi knife.

He then raped her after she had resisted for some time and after a short while, she told him to get off but he refused.
She got hold of his private parts and squeezed them hard and threatened to keep on squeezing if he did not dismount.
He slapped her several times in the face and when she did not let go, Ndlovu stabbed her thrice on the head and once on the left arm.

She clung to his private parts until he threw away the knife and throttled her using both hands. He only stopped when he noticed that she was bleeding from the nose.
Ndlovu panicked and carried the body into his bedroom and hid it under the bed before running away.
The following morning, the victim’s mother started looking for her before making a report to the village head.

A search party was later dispatched to Ndlovu’s homestead leading to the discovery of the body under the bed.
Ndlovu (37) last week pleaded not guilty to murder but was convicted of murder with actual intent by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Martin Makonese sitting with Mrs Elizabeth Chazanga and Mr Nehemiah Dube as assessors.

He was sentenced to death after the court failed to get any extenuating circumstances.
In his defence, Ndlovu, through his lawyer, Mr Thabani Nkala, of Messrs Dube and Company, claimed that they were lovers and that on the fateful day she had refused to be intimate with him, resulting in him forcing himself  on her.

He claimed that he throttled her in an effort to make her let go of her hold on his private parts.
According to the post-mortem report produced in court by Mr Khumbulani Ndlovu of the Attorney General’s Office, the woman suffered sub-arachnoid haemorrhage as a result of the head injury.