Thozamile Taki was convicted in December 2010 of murdering 13 young women in 2007. Each of them had been looking for work. He presented himself as a man who could place them in well-paid jobs, asked them for money to cover rent or a bribe to secure the position, and took them to Umzinto, on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, or to Port St Johns, in the Eastern Cape. They did not come back. Their families, in Durban's townships and in villages across the former Transkei, spent months waiting for police to identify them.
Judge King Ndlovu of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court found Taki guilty on all 26 counts against him, 13 of murder and 13 of robbery with aggravating circumstances. On January 19, 2011, he sentenced him to life imprisonment for each woman and 16 years for each robbery, all to run concurrently, and refused him leave to appeal the same day. The case was built on witnesses who picked him out at identity parades and on cellphone records that showed him using the dead women's phones. The South African press called him the "sugar-cane serial killer."
Little is known of Taki's life before 2007. A Sapa report from his first open court appearance in November 2007 said he came from the Majola area near Port St Johns, in the Eastern Cape. He was 36 at the time, by that and later reports from 2008 and 2009; by 2010 the press gave his age as 38 and then 39.
At the sentencing hearing in December 2010, his lawyer, Thulani Shange, described a hard childhood. Taki had gone to school only as far as Grade 4, which he did not pass, the defence told the court. His father went to Johannesburg to work when Taki was nine and never came back. His mother was sick and unemployed. He was the eldest of three children and began looking for work at 13. The judge replied that many people grew up in worse conditions, but said he would take Taki's circumstances into account.
Taki had a criminal record before 2007. A 2021 account in the Cape Argus by Lee Rondganger, which reviewed the case, said he had previous convictions for housebreaking in 1997 and for robbery in 1999.
By 2007 he had a wife and a girlfriend. His wife lived in Port St Johns, according to police evidence at the trial. He lived with his girlfriend at Welbedacht, near Chatsworth, south of Durban, where the two of them were arrested. The girlfriend later told the court that he had said he worked for Telkom, the telephone company.
Thirteen women are named on the memorial plaque that was later put up at Umzinto in their honor. As listed by the Cape Argus in 2021, with their home areas, they are: Makhosi Mgobhozi of Efolweni; Noxolo Mpande of Bhizana; Nosisa Nozozo of Libode; Charity Mthethwa of Tongaat; Rose Mjoli of Bhizana; Khanyisile Ncayiyana of Bhizana; Thandeka Mthebeni of Matatiyela; Nonjabulo Mpanza and Philisiwe Mpanza, sisters from Efolweni; Nombali Ngcobo of uMzinyathi; Thandazile Bhokoda of Lusikisiki; Siziwe Tshongaye of Lusikisiki; and Cherity Khumalo of KwaMashu. Some of the names are spelled differently in other reports.
All of them were looking for work when they disappeared, the Cape Argus account said. At sentencing, Judge Ndlovu said that they were young and that each of them had wanted a job or a better one. The prosecutor told the court that some of their families had borrowed from loan sharks to find the money he asked for.
A little more is known about some of them.
Nombali Ngcobo, 35, came from Inanda, outside Durban. She was the first of the women to be identified and the first to be returned to her family for burial. She had gone to meet a man who had promised her a well-paid job. Her mother told Sowetan in October 2007 that Nombali's two sons, then 17 and two years old, missed her badly. A friend of hers who had also been offered work by the same man later said that Nombali went with him first, and that Nombali's sister had warned the friend that the offer sounded too good to be true and persuaded her to go home.
Philisiwe Mpanza, 27, and her sister Nonjabulo Mpanza, 21, lived in Folweni, south of Durban. They disappeared in June 2007, on their way to Isipingo to meet a man who had offered them jobs paying R4,000 a month, their family told Sowetan. Police and the press treated them as possibly the first of the victims. Their family reported them missing in June and searched for them for three months. In September 2007 a relative said the family would have no peace until they could face the man accused and ask him their questions. They asked that their own names not be published because they feared for their safety. At the 2011 memorial a brother of the two women spoke of losing both of his sisters.
Noxolo Mpande worked at a restaurant in Durban. Her fiance testified at the trial in August 2009 that she had been offered work in Umzinto by a man who said she would have to pay for accommodation in Scottburgh. He borrowed R1,000 from a loan shark to help her. He let her go with the man, he told the court, and that was the last time he saw her. When he went to a Durban police station to report her missing, he was told that nothing could be done because it was a Sunday.
Siziwe Tshongaye came from Lusikisiki, in the Eastern Cape. In October 2007 Sowetan reported on a family from the former Transkei who were waiting for DNA results on a daughter it named as Zuzile Tshongaye. She had been living in Durban and looking for work, the report said, when she left earlier that year, in January, with a man who had promised her a job in Port St Johns. Investigators believed she was among the victims because, the report said, the man in custody had confessed to killing her.
Khanyisile Ncayiyana's family sat through the trial. When the verdict came in December 2010, one of her relatives told Sowetan that the family had not been able to sleep at night for not knowing what had happened to her.
Thandeka Mthebeni came from Matatiyela, in the Eastern Cape. During the trial, in August 2010, one of her relatives broke down in the gallery during police evidence and was helped out of court.
Nosisa Nozozo, from Libode in the Eastern Cape, is the woman whose cellphone led the police to Taki.
The pattern the state later set out in court was the same each time. A man approached a woman who needed work and told her he could get her a job, sometimes with a factory or company on the coast. The state said he promised most of them work in Umzinto. He told them they would have to bring money, which the state put at between R300 and R3,000, for rent or accommodation or as a bribe to secure the job; in court most of the women were said to have been told they needed R1,500. Once they had traveled with him, they could no longer be reached on their cellphones. The state said he took their cash, their phones and their clothes.
Some of the women received a call before they left from a woman who told them, "This is my brother. You've got nothing to fear," according to evidence heard at a bail hearing in November 2007. The investigating officer, Nico Crouse, said there was a strong possibility that the caller was Taki's girlfriend. Cellphone records later showed that her number had been used to call some of the victims. She denied making the calls and said Taki sometimes used her phone.
A woman who sat beside the man on a minibus taxi, and who decided at the last moment not to travel on with him, later helped police build an identikit picture of him, according to the 2021 Cape Argus account.
The first body was found near Umzinto in early September 2007, according to Sapa. Within weeks police had found more, all near Shayamoya, a township at Umzinto, and by October 1, 2007, Sowetan was reporting a count of eight. Only one of them, Nombali Ngcobo, had been identified. Families came forward at the rate of more than three a day to ask police about missing relatives. A woman who lived in the area told Sowetan that she believed there were more bodies still to be found and that, despite the arrests, she was afraid to walk about freely.
The count went on rising. Sowetan reported in October 2007 that a family from the Eastern Cape was waiting for DNA results that could make their missing daughter the 11th victim. By January 2008 the paper put the number of bodies found near Shayamoya at 11. Two more women were later found at Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, bringing the number linked to Taki to 13. Police said in November 2007 that they were investigating three bodies found near Port St Johns but had not yet linked them to the case. The 2021 Cape Argus account said that 11 victims had been linked to the case by November 14, 2007, and that two more were linked later.
Identification was slow. In January 2008, police confirmed that DNA tests had identified two more of the women; others were still awaiting identification. A month later, in February 2008, police told Sowetan that four more had been identified and were ready for burial, which brought the number of identified victims to seven. The police spokesman, Vincent Mdunge, said the names would not be released until every family had been told, and that police wanted every victim identified before the case was finished in court. Families and members of the public criticized the police for slow progress.
The investigation was run by detectives from the Port Shepstone Organised Crime Unit working with the KwaZulu-Natal provincial police office, according to the Cape Argus account. Thirty officers and sniffer dogs took part, and forensic experts flew in from Pretoria. Police were at first reluctant to say that the deaths were the work of one man, the account said, but the number of victims soon made that impossible to deny. In many of the missing-person reports, the families said the last person the woman had been in touch with was a man who had promised her a job.
The break came through one of the missing women's phones. Captain Mthandeni Nyawose told the court in August 2010 that cellphone experts had helped investigators locate the phone of Nosisa Nozozo, who was also missing. Police found it in Stanger, in KwaZulu-Natal, in the hands of Taki's sister-in-law. She told them that Taki, her brother-in-law, had given it to her. A Sowetan report earlier in 2010 said he had given her the phone to pass on to his girlfriend.
The sister-in-law led police to her sister, Taki's wife, in Port St Johns, and his wife helped them find him. Both women later gave evidence for the state. Taki had admitted giving the phone to his sister-in-law, Captain Nyawose said.
Police arrested Taki at about 2 a.m. on September 24, 2007, at Welbedacht, near Durban, according to the police evidence reported in 2010. The 2021 Cape Argus account describes a raid by heavily armed police on the home he shared with his girlfriend. Police seized clothes and blankets and bank and clothing-store cards, and the cellphones and clothing they found were believed to belong to some of the victims. A Sapa report in 2009 said most of the women's cellphones had been found in his house or with someone linked to him, together with bank, welfare and clothing account cards belonging to some of them. One phone, identified in the judgment as Charity Khumalo's (her first name is spelled Cherity on the memorial plaque), was found at his girlfriend's home in September 2007. She said she had bought it in a shop, but she could not produce proof of purchase.
Five people were arrested in the first sweep, three women and two men. Three were released. Among them was a 28-year-old man against whom charges in this case were dropped on October 10, 2007; he was wanted in the Eastern Cape and the Free State on other charges. Two people stayed in custody: Taki and his girlfriend.
On September 27, 2007, Taki took police to a series of scenes, a constable who was with the team told the court in 2010. Taki later said he had been forced to do so. The constable rejected that.
The early appearances in the Umzinto Magistrate's Court were held in camera, so that detectives could hold identification parades, and the suspects' names were withheld. At least 150 protesters gathered outside the court on October 10, 2007. On November 9, 2007, at the first open hearing, the magistrate, Giel van Aarde, remanded the case for further investigation. The courtroom was packed with relatives, and the police presence outside was heavy. The prosecutor, Advocate Noxolo Tokwana, said Taki had not applied for bail. His girlfriend applied on November 27, 2007, and was refused.
In January 2008 Taki and his girlfriend appeared again and were reported to face 11 charges of murder and robbery. In March 2008, when Sapa reported that he was accused of murdering 11 women, the case was postponed to April 23 for further investigation. By the time of the trial the charges had grown to 13 counts of murder and 13 of robbery with aggravating circumstances. His girlfriend was charged as an accessory to the 13 robberies.
On October 25, 2007, women's groups held a memorial service at Nombali Ngcobo's family home in Inanda, attended by the province's first lady, Zama Ndebele. "We are not here to open old wounds, but to give support as women," she said. Janine Hicks of the Commission on Gender Equality told Sapa that November that the nature of violence against women was changing.
The trial was heard by Judge King Ndlovu of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court. For most of its length the court sat on the South Coast: Sapa reported the 2009 hearings at Scottburgh, and Sowetan reported the 2010 hearings at Ramsgate. The final stages were heard in Durban. Sapa put the start of the trial at July 30, 2009; the 2021 Cape Argus account said it began in 2008. Advocate Noxolo Tokwana led the prosecution, and Thulani Shange represented Taki. Taki and his girlfriend pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
The state listed 103 witnesses. Ten of them had testified by the first week of August 2009, 68 by mid-September 2009 and 87 by the start of February 2010. Some of the evidence had to be interpreted twice, from isiXhosa into isiZulu and then into English, the Cape Argus account said. The public gallery was often full, and relatives of the women attended throughout.
Among the early witnesses was Noxolo Mpande's fiance. When he finished, Shange asked for an adjournment to consult his client. The state opposed it, and the judge refused, saying Shange had had enough time to study the witness statements.
Inspector Edward Mzinyane was cross-examined in the first week, and it was then that the defence first claimed that police had assaulted Taki, Sapa reported.
Taki's challenge to the police evidence led to two trials within the trial, hearings in which the judge decided whether disputed evidence could be admitted. Evidence that Taki had taken police to the scenes was one of the points in dispute.
Taki took the stand for the first time in September 2009. He told the court that police had handed him a list of 13 names and made him copy it onto another sheet of paper, so that it could be presented as his own work, and that he agreed only after police threatened to kill him. The 13 names on that list were the 13 women the state said he had killed. He also denied police evidence that, after agreeing to cooperate, he had demanded a special diet, including fried chicken from KFC. "It is not true at all," he said, adding that he did not eat fatty food because it made him ill.
In January 2010, at Ramsgate, a constable, Mthokozisi Jele, described going with the police team that Taki led to the scenes on September 27, 2007. He rejected Taki's claim that he had been forced to do it. Sowetan's reporter described Shange struggling to put his questions and the judge stepping in to clear up the confusion, while Taki raised his hand to get his lawyer's attention and briefed him on what had happened that day. Superintendent Bhekani Nala, a captain in 2007, was among the other police witnesses called about the events of September 2007.
In February 2010, with more than 80 of the state's witnesses heard, Taki tried to escape from Westville prison in Durban, where he was being held awaiting trial. TimesLIVE reported on February 23, 2010, that nine awaiting-trial prisoners had broken out of their cells in the prison's medium A section and climbed down knotted bed sheets. Eight got away. Taki was the ninth. He slipped and broke his leg, and his screams alerted the warders, the paper reported. A prisons spokeswoman, Nokuthula Zikhali, said he was in hospital under police guard. Sowetan reported that he had fallen from the fourth-floor roof, and Sapa later said he had fallen through a ceiling.
By February 26, 2010, Taki had been moved from King Edward Hospital to the hospital at Westville prison, and he faced a new charge of attempting to escape from lawful custody. The escape attempt delayed the trial. In its later reports Sapa dated the escape attempt to March 2010.
Taki denied everything. "I know nothing about the killings. I also did not rob anyone," he told the court, according to Sapa. He rejected the investigators' evidence and called the state witnesses liars.
His girlfriend also denied any part in the crimes. She told the court that Taki had given her second-hand women's clothing and cellphones, which police said had been taken from the victims, and that she had not suspected anything. "Our relationship was normal," she said. She said Taki had told her he worked for Telkom.
In September 2010 the national police minister, Nathi Mthethwa, attended the trial to show his confidence in the justice system, Sapa reported.
Judgment began in the Durban High Court on December 22, 2010. Mthethwa sat in the front row. "This is the moment. I beg the people to be patient, this is not a short judgement," Judge Ndlovu said. Relatives in the gallery cried out as he read the names of the dead women. Members of the African National Congress Women's League picketed outside, and when Taki was led out at lunch they sang about a man who had killed women after promising them jobs. In his summary of the evidence, the judge noted the state's case that Taki had used a SIM card from one of the women's phones, and evidence that his girlfriend had been in contact with some of the women before they died.
He delivered his verdict the next day, December 23, 2010. "The state has proven their case beyond reasonable doubt on all 26 counts," he said. He found the state witnesses credible, unbiased, reliable and honest, and the police evidence credible. He rejected Taki's own evidence as evasive, unsubstantial and untrue, and his account as highly improbable. At both identity parades, held at Hibberdene and at Brighton Beach, every witness had picked Taki out without hesitation, which the judge said could not be a coincidence. The evidence showed that Taki had used the dead women's cellphones. The way the killings were carried out, the same each time, showed the work of a serial killer, he said.
Taki's girlfriend was found not guilty on all charges and told to step down from the dock. The judge called her a victim of circumstance. She had found herself in trouble, he said, because she had not cooperated with the police.
Relatives told reporters they were relieved. One woman said she wanted Taki to die in jail. During the proceedings Taki threatened to hit a photographer who was taking his picture, Sapa reported. A relative of Khanyisile Ncayiyana said her family had wanted his girlfriend convicted as well.
The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal welcomed the verdict. Its provincial secretary, Sihle Zikalala, called it long overdue and said it sent a clear message that those who abused women had no place in society. The director-general of the national Ministry for Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Nonhlanhla Mkhize, who had attended the last two days of the hearing, asked the court to impose the heaviest sentence possible.
The sentencing arguments were heard in late December 2010. Shange asked the court to weigh Taki's upbringing and told it he had been held for 39 months while he waited for the trial to end. Tokwana asked for life imprisonment on each murder count and 15 years for each robbery. The women had been defenseless and unarmed and had trusted him, she said; he had promised them jobs and taken the little they had. He had shown no remorse, she told the court, and had treated the families' grief as a joke. "It is the duty of this court to protect law abiding citizens from people like the accused," she said. The judge set sentence for January 19, 2011, and ordered that Taki stay in custody at Westville prison.
On January 19, 2011, Judge Ndlovu sentenced him to life imprisonment for each of the 13 murders and 16 years for each of the 13 robberies, 208 years in all, with every sentence to run concurrently. "I watched the accused during the trial, he was callous and insensitive," the judge said. He called Taki a jackal in sheep's clothing to his victims and said he had shown no remorse. "He is a danger to society, he cannot be rehabilitated," he said, and he recommended that Taki never be released on parole, according to the 2021 Cape Argus account. He said the sentence would bring some consolation to the women's families and friends, and he commended the investigating team and the cellphone experts who gave evidence.
The families in the public gallery cried, sang and danced, and some praised the prosecutor. The government's ministry for women later said Taki had laughed at the victims' relatives as they cried during the sentencing.
Shange applied for leave to appeal the same afternoon. He argued that the state's case rested on circumstantial evidence, that no DNA evidence linked Taki to the murders, and that the identity parade had been unfair. Tokwana replied that Taki had himself chosen the people who stood in the parade and that it was too late to raise the point. Judge Ndlovu refused leave to appeal. People in the gallery cheered, and some shouted "Rot in hell" and "Die in prison."
The investigators were widely praised. Dumisani Mthalane of the South African National Civic Organisation said they had handled the case with dedication and professionalism. The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal thanked the police, the courts and the other agencies involved, and said the sentence sent a clear message that there was no place for abusers of women. Sibani Mngadi, a spokesman for the Ministry for Women, Children and People with Disabilities, commended the investigators and prosecutors for what he called sterling work. The ministry called the sentence firm and said Taki should not be considered for parole.
After sentencing Taki was reported in May 2011 to be serving his sentence at Kokstad C-Max prison. The 2021 Cape Argus account said that he remained in prison.
On May 4, 2011, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature and the trade union federation Cosatu marked Workers' Month at the Umzinto sports grounds with a plaque honoring the 13 women and the unveiling of the Umzinto Wall of Remembrance. The friend of Nombali Ngcobo who had turned back spoke at the event. "I became suspicious but I was desperate for a job," she said. Cosatu's general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, said the case was rooted in South Africa's colonial and apartheid history and linked it to mass unemployment. "Thozamile Taki was not unique," he said. The 2021 Cape Argus account quoted the prosecutor's argument that Taki had exploited high unemployment to prey on vulnerable young women.
Several points in the record are disputed or were never settled.
Taki's account of the police. He told the court that police assaulted him, threatened to kill him and made him copy out a list of names, and that he was forced to take them to the scenes. The police witnesses denied it, and the judge found the police evidence credible.
The number of women at each place. Sapa reported in November 2007 that he was alleged to have lured 10 women to Umzinto, and in January 2011 that the court found 11 had been lured to Umzinto and two to Port St Johns.
The first victims. Police and the press described the Mpanza sisters, who went missing in June 2007, as possibly the first, but the Sowetan report on Siziwe or Zuzile Tshongaye said she had left with a man in January.
Other suspects. Three of the five people first arrested were released, and only Taki and his girlfriend went to trial.
The girlfriend's role. The state's case was that she was the woman who reassured some of the victims by phone. She denied it, and she was acquitted on all charges.
Ages. The women were described as 18 to 25 in the 2021 Cape Argus account and as 20 to 35 in a Sowetan report of January 2010; the ages given in 2007 for three of the named women were 21, 27 and 35.
1997: convicted of housebreaking (Cape Argus, 2021).
1999: convicted of robbery (Cape Argus, 2021).
January 2007: a woman from the Eastern Cape later named as one of the victims leaves Durban with a man who promised her work in Port St Johns, by her family's account.
June 2007: Philisiwe and Nonjabulo Mpanza go missing from Folweni.
Early September 2007: the first body is found near Umzinto.
September 24, 2007: Taki is arrested at Welbedacht, near Durban, at about 2 a.m.
September 27, 2007: Taki takes police to the scenes, by police evidence at trial.
October 1, 2007: Sowetan reports eight bodies found near Shayamoya, Umzinto.
October 10, 2007: about 150 protesters gather outside the Umzinto court; charges against one man arrested in the first sweep are dropped.
October 25, 2007: memorial service at Nombali Ngcobo's home in Inanda.
November 9, 2007: first open court appearance; case remanded.
November 27, 2007: his girlfriend is refused bail.
January and February 2008: DNA tests identify more of the women; seven are confirmed by February 19.
March 17, 2008: case postponed in the Umzinto Magistrate's Court.
July 30, 2009: trial begins, by Sapa's account (the Cape Argus says 2008).
September 2009: Taki testifies about his treatment by police.
January 2010: trial within a trial at Ramsgate.
February 2010: Taki is injured in a failed escape attempt at Westville prison; eight other prisoners get away.
August 2010: police describe tracing Nosisa Nozozo's phone.
September 2010: Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa attends the trial.
December 22 and 23, 2010: judgment; Taki is convicted on all 26 counts; his girlfriend is acquitted.
January 19, 2011: 13 life sentences plus 208 years, concurrent; leave to appeal refused.
May 4, 2011: Umzinto Wall of Remembrance unveiled.
September 10, 2021: the Cape Argus reports that he remains in prison.