Johannesburg Police Arrest Sifiso Mkhwanazi After Six Women Are Found Dead at His Father's Workshop
The bodies were hidden at a panel-beating business in Selby. Police said he would face six murder counts; prosecutors charged him with one.
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The smell came first. The caretaker at a panel-beating workshop in Selby, Johannesburg, followed it, and what was found there turned a family business into a crime scene: the decomposing bodies of six women. On Sunday, October 9, 2022, police arrested Sifiso Mkhwanazi, 20, the son of the man who owned the business.
His father did not defend him. Speaking to the SABC, he said the caretaker had made the discovery after noticing the smell, and that the family had looked into it themselves before the police arrived. "We went to check the CCTV and we obviously saw it was him," he said. "He was the one making all the rounds for cover-up." He said he felt like disowning his son.
The women were believed to be sex workers. They were not named; prosecutors said the families would be told once DNA results came back, and only then would their identities be made public.
On Tuesday, October 11, Mkhwanazi made his first appearance in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court. Police had said in a statement the day before that he would face six counts of murder. The National Prosecuting Authority charged him with one. Its spokesperson, Phindi Louw Mjonondwane, said the evidence in the docket did not yet tie him to the other five deaths. "We are not contradicting the police as the NPA, but what we are saying is that the suspect is yet to be linked with the murder of the five other women," she said outside court, adding that it was the prosecutors' duty to investigate how the other bodies came to be in the same building.
Mkhwanazi indicated that he wanted to apply for bail. The case was postponed to October 18 for further investigation, an identity parade and a formal bail hearing, and Mjonondwane said the state would oppose his release: the charge was a Schedule 6 offense, which carries stricter bail conditions than any other. The magistrate noted that a conviction could carry a life sentence. Reporters admitted to the hearing were ordered not to photograph the accused or publish pictures of him.
At this stage Mkhwanazi had been arrested and charged with a single murder. He had not been tried, and no court had found him responsible for any of the six deaths.
What followed, and where accounts differ. Mkhwanazi abandoned his bail application at a later appearance, and in late October 2022 he still faced only the one murder count while DNA results on the bodies were outstanding, the Associated Press reported. In September 2024 he was sentenced to six life terms for the rapes and murders of the six women (see Related News). His age is given as 20 in the October 11, 2022 report, which says police had confirmed it, but as 21 in the father's own words in that report and in the Associated Press account three weeks later.
Sources
- Suspected rapist and serial killer of alleged sex worker makes his first court appearance, IOL / The Star, Siyabonga Sithole
- Protests continue outside Johannesburg courthouse over suspected serial killer, Associated Press, via Africanews