When Judge Seun Moshidi came to the killing of Tina Bernardes in his judgment, he called it "a cruel cold-blooded one." It was, he said, like the killing of Rashunthee Singh, a thirty-nine-year-old woman who had died a painful death: in both cases the stones used to strike them on the head were found beside their bodies. The judge was reading his verdict in court 4E of the Johannesburg High Court in August 2006, with the public gallery full of the families of the boys and girls Sipho Dube had lured away, and it took him more than one day to get through it.
Dube came from Mhlumayo, near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, and was about thirty at the time of the trial; one report gave his age as twenty-seven. Between 2002 and 2003 he was homeless and undocumented, drifting among the mine dumps on the southern side of Johannesburg. The state's case was that from May 2001 to January 2004, first in his home district and then in the city, he targeted children between eight and sixteen, drew them to deserted places such as mine dumps, bushes and the ground under bridges, and sexually assaulted them there, killing some of them. He had a set of lures: toys, cellphones, a reward for helping to carry his luggage. Sometimes he posed as a police officer, sometimes as a handyman who could fix an electrical appliance. The victims suffered head injuries, chest wounds and brain trauma.
The dead were Singh and six children: Tina Bernardes, Nomnikelo Jumba, Lukhanyo Kuwane, Thabo Dlongolo, and two cousins, Anele and Siyabonga Mbuku. On one occasion Dube took the police up a hill and showed them a bloodied school blazer and books, telling them that Nomnikelo, fourteen, had been raped there before she was killed. The police profilers and senior detectives assigned to the case did not catch him. What finally stopped him, according to a later account, was not an investigative breakthrough but the persistence of a father determined to find justice for his little girl. He was caught in 2004, and among the charges he later faced was one of escaping from custody. The investigating officer, Superintendent Piet Byleveld, called him "a very brutal guy" and said it had been a tough investigation, involving about seventy witnesses.
He pleaded not guilty to all forty-one charges: seven of murder, seventeen of kidnapping, four of rape, six of indecent assault, three of robbery, and one each of theft, attempted theft, assault and escape. In his testimony he said police had beaten him repeatedly to make him point out crime scenes, and had taken him to a farm outside Pretoria to force him to sign statements. Moshidi held a trial within the trial on those claims and ruled the evidence admissible. He found it improbable that Dube had not gone to the scenes voluntarily, and "highly unlikely that all police officers and witnesses will conspire against the accused and falsely implicate him." On August 8, 2006, he convicted Dube of the murders of six children and a woman, the rapes of three girls, the indecent assault of boys, ten kidnappings, a robbery, a theft, a common assault and an assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
At the sentencing hearing on August 16, a police psychologist, Gerald Labuschagne, told the court there was no prospect of rehabilitation and that jail was the only option, because sexual serial murderers tend to escalate and their risk of reoffending grows with each year. Dube's intelligence, he said, had won him his victims' trust; he had needed a sophisticated kind of manipulation to get children to go wherever he asked. Dube's aunt testified that he had had a troubled childhood.
On August 23 Moshidi imposed a life sentence for each of the seven murders and each of the three rapes, finding no substantial and compelling circumstances to justify less than the prescribed minimum, and added 114 years for the kidnappings, indecent assaults and other counts. "The accused showed no mercy at all to his victims," he said. "The crimes were clearly premeditated and well-planned." Dube, he said, had shown no remorse and was a significant danger to society. The sentences run together as an effective life term, with at least twenty-five years to serve before parole can be considered. The judge said he had thought about imposing a longer wait but left that to the correctional authorities, and he told the families they could ask to be heard at any future parole hearing. Dube had cursed the police before the hearing for taking away his bottle of flavored water, and tried to hide behind a balaclava and sunglasses until the judge ordered him to take them off and stand. As he was led down to the cells, he swore at the people in the courtroom.
In May 2010 a Sowetan reporter visited him in prison, where he was serving the sentence.