WINDHOEK - An Otjiwarongo man who admitted in the Windhoek High Court yesterday that he hacked his girlfriend 45 times on her head, neck and face, said he committed the gruesome deed because the deceased refused to break up with him despite her having another boyfriend.

Josia Shimweefeleni, 42, told the court he had repeatedly asked Frieda Ndalila Nambahu, with whom he was in a relationship for at least seven years, to leave him as she had apparently found another boyfriend. 

According to him, the deceased refused and told him no other woman will sleep in his bed except her.
In a plea explanation read into the record by legal aid lawyer, Mwala Siambango, on his behalf, Shimweefeleni said on the day in question he locked himself and the deceased inside his room and thereafter an argument erupted between them about their relationship, which led to him stabbing the victim. “At the time of hitting/chopping the deceased with the panga I knew that my actions were unlawful and therefore punishable by law and I knew that the deceased will die,” he stated.

According to the State, Shimweefeleni killed Nambahu in a fit of jealousy and he chopped her at least 25 times with the panga on the head and several more times on the neck and face on August 19, 2016 at the single quarters in Otjiwarongo. The deceased died on the scene because of severe blood loss.

However, during cross-examination, Shimweefeleni said that on that fateful day he was at home as he had put in some leave to go to the North, and he was selling a local home brew from his room at the single quarters. At one stage a man came and asked him for a glass of the liquor and he gave it to him, Shimweefeleni said. 

He went on to say that while he was busy with the man he received a phone call and went inside his room to answer the call, but when he came out he found Nambahu talking to the man while poking him in his ribs. He then asked Nambahu whether it was her new boyfriend and she replied that he has a penis just like him. According to Shimweefeleni, he asked her again if this man was her new boyfriend to which she answered again that the man has a penis just like him. 

“I then went back to my room and the deceased came there after a while saying she is hungry and insisting that she will cook,” he said and added: “After we ate the deceased told me she was going to a bar where Tafel Lager was on promotion, but after 15 minutes she returned and told me to open the doo, which I in the meantime had locked. After I opened she came in and said she just came to fetch money to go to the beer promotion and then her phone rang and from her part of the conversation I could hear she was talking to the man from earlier, and I heard her say that she will take some cold beers from my room for them. I then grabbed her on the arm and she pushed me away and I fell next to the panga, which I took. She tried to wrestle the panga away from me, but I then continuously chopped her with the panga.”

Siambango asked the court for leniency as the accused indicated from the onset that he wished to plead guilty and left the sentence in the hands of the court, while Deputy Prosecutor General Advocate Antonia Verhoef said this a classic case for a life sentence because of the horrendousness of the attack.
Judge Naomi Shivute said she will deliver sentence on September 27.