A Windhoek resident, accused of killing his girlfriend and mother of his then two-year-old son by stabbing her once in the chest with a knife, yesterday pleaded not guilty before High Court Judge Christie Liebenberg. 
Gustav Bethuel Romeo Pienaar is charged with one count of murder read with the provisions of the Combating of Domestic Violence Act for allegedly stabbing Magde Christina Cloete to death, one count of assault by threat for threatening to kill Hilaria Amukoto and defeating or obstructing or attempting to defeat the course of justice for hiding or destroying the knife used in the murder.

He did not enter a plea explanation, his State-funded lawyer Tjingairi Kaurivi confirmed the plea. Kaurivi said his client will remain silent and put the State to prove all its allegations.

However, during cross-examination of the State’s first witness, Dina Smith, Kaurivi told her that his client is saying she is the one who stabbed the deceased. 

Smith told the court that she and her boyfriend were drinking with the deceased and other friends at a shebeen in Havana, Katutura when the accused arrived.

According to Smith, the deceased did not want to go home with the accused, as she was informed by neighbours that he was with another woman at the shack.

She went on to say that a quarrel then ensued between the two, while Pienaar reportedly grabbed the deceased on her shirt and forced her to go with him.

After about 50 minutes, Smith said, she also left the shebeen and found the deceased and Pienaar at a bus stop on her way home, where he was trying to sell a knife to some women there.
According to Smith, the deceased called her and said: ‘Oh Dina, it is good that you came, Pienaar said he will kill me’.

Shortly after that, the witness narrated, the accused came to them, asking ‘are you still here?’, stabbed the deceased with the knife across her upper chest, grabbed the child and ran away.
According to her, the deceased then fell down next to her and just lay there. The ambulance was called but arrived too late, as the deceased died on the scene.

Pienaar had to be cautioned by Judge Liebenberg to behave, as he continuously gestured and pointed during the testimony of Smith.

According to the indictment, Pienaar and the deceased were in an intimate relationship and lived together.
During the period 7 to 8 May 2018, the accused removed the deceased’s belongings from the shack they shared because he was angry – and during the same time, he threatened to kill Amukoto.
Advocate Marthino Olivier is prosecuting and the case continues today. Pienaar remains in custody.