Windhoek
A man convicted on Friday of the murder of his common law wife tried to leave the courtroom after the judge cancelled his bail, but court orderlies thwarted his attempt to escape.
Fanie Basson, 48, who was free on bail of N$500 for the duration of his trial, was found guilty of murder with direct intent, read with the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act.
The charges arose from an incident in which Basson fatally stabbed Johanna Basson on September 26, 2009 at Donkerhoek near Khorixas.
Judge Alfred Siboleka rejected Basson’s claims that it was an intruder who killed the deceased by cutting her throat with an old Okapi knife. According to the judge, the testimony of the two minor children, who testified on behalf of the State, was consistent and not shaken in any manner.
From their testimonies it was established the accused and the deceased were in each other’s company that whole day and were apparently fighting, the judge stated.
He said the evidence further established that the accused stayed in the company of the deceased, while he sent the children to buy matches. When the children returned they found the accused and the deceased still inside the house.
While the witnesses did not observe the actual killing, their testimonies clearly state they left their mother in the company of the accused in the house and found them still in the house upon their return, but this time around the woman was dead and Basson’s shirt and trousers were bloodstained.
“Therefore, from the whole evidence the causal chain of events from the drinking outlet to the scene of the crime inside the house where the accused was found with a bloodstained shirt and short trousers, while the deceased was in bed lying on her back – covered with a bloodstained blanket – dead, has not been broken,” Judge Siboleka stressed.
The accused’s contention about the possibility that an unknown person may have entered the closable, but non-lockable shack in his absence to kill and disappear without detection is completely displaced by the minor witnesses’ testimonies, as well as his own conduct after the incident.
According to Judge Siboleka, while the whole case rests on circumstantial evidence, there is in his view no other explanation except that it was the accused that attacked and fatally wounded the deceased.
He further said the accused’s version of what happened on that fateful day is not only improbable, but false beyond reasonable doubt.
According to the charge sheet Basson and the deceased were in a domestic relationship and during the evening of September 26, 2009 a quarrel broke out between the two. He then attacked the deceased and hit her all over her body, whereafter he stabbed her at least five times with a knife all over her body and neck. She died from a stabwound to her neck.
Basson is represented by Titus Mbaeva on instructions from Legal Aid and State Advocate Jack Eixab is prosecuting. The case was postponed to October 29, for arguments on the sentence to be imposed.