The man found guilty of killing and raping the mother-in-law of celebrity Soli Philander was sentenced to two life terms by the Free State High Court on Friday.
Prosecutor Amanda Bester said Simon Matshwane received a life sentence each for housebreaking with the intent to commit rape and for murder. He was sentenced to a further 18 years for robbery with aggravating circumstances and got another six months’ imprisonment for theft. The sentences will run concurrently.
Judge Arrie Hattingh on Thursday found Matshwane (20) guilty on all four counts.
Soli Philander’s wife, Toni, whose mother, Eugene Schaefer (72) was Matshwane’s victim, said: ”My personal opinion is that he doesn’t deserve life, he deserves death. I feel sentencing was very fair and the judge had very harsh words for him [Matshwane]. He was horrified by the brutality [of the crime].”
She said she is still struggling ”with the forgiveness part”.
”I feel a lot of anger at the brutality of the crime. If it had been a gunshot, it would have been a lot easier to handle.”
She asked that pictures of Schaefer not be published alongside those of Matshwane.
Violent attack
Beeld quoted Hattingh as saying on Thursday that, after breaking into Schaefer’s house on May 26 last year, Matshwane first stood and watched her for about 30 minutes as she lay sleeping.
After she woke up, he stabbed her twice in the neck with a knife and, while she was bleeding, raped her. He then stabbed her a further 22 times with a pocket knife and home-made dagger with a blade of about 25cm in length. In total, he stabbed her about 38 times in the face and neck.
Matshwane said he considered raping her again after she died, but, looking at his watch, realised the sun was rising, and fled, Beeld reported.
He used a condom in an attempt to avoid being caught for the crime. However, police later found it in a toilet in Schaefer’s house.
Hattingh called him a coward and a sadist. ”He’s a sadist who waited for his victim to wake up so that he could torture her.”
Most of the things he stole from Schaefer were of ornamental value. Matshwane went so far as taking her photo frames into which he inserted his own pictures, said Hattingh.
‘Like a snake’
”He’s not only a killer and a rapist, but also a coward. He sought a victim requiring little effort. Like a snake, he slithered from the passage into her room. He’s a self-confessed, sex-obsessed criminal. He carries condoms with him the way other people carry peppermints.”
Hattingh said Matshwane’s room was full of unseemly pictures. He was out on parole for housebreaking when he killed Schaefer.
The judge told Matshwane that were he to call him (Matshwane) a pig, he would be insulting pigs. ”Even pigs don’t do such things. I don’t even want to compare him with other living creatures.”
Hattingh also had harsh words for the country’s justice system. ”A life sentence doesn’t mean that a criminal will spend the rest of his life in jail. The public is being misled. After 25 years, such a criminal comes into consideration for parole. After that time, prison has turned him into a hardened criminal.
”The parole board only looks at the criminal and not the public interest. Correctional services is sick. If a prisoner eats all his food, does all his exercises and doesn’t break the television sets, he comes into consideration for parole due to good conduct.
”The death sentence would do away with all these problems,” Beeld quoted him as saying. — Sapa