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- A man said he was possessed by an "evil spirit" when he murdered his girlfriend.
- This was typical of intimate partner murderers who shift the blame from themselves, an expert said.
- The court is hearing pre-sentencing reports on the man who stabbed his girlfriend to death.
A specialist in intimate partner violence rubbished the idea of an "evil spirit" leading men to murder their partners.
The University of Cape Town's Professor of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Naeemah Abrahams, said it was just a matter of such men refusing to accept responsibility for their actions.
"They say that they snapped, or they lost control, but they were actually trying to gain control of their partner," she said.
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Abrahams was testifying during the sentencing proceedings of Muepa Kasongo in the Western Cape High Court.
He was found guilty of stabbing his ex-girlfriend, Simnikiwe Mfengu, to death. He stabbed her 11 times on the night of 3 December 2018.
In his defence, he said that she attacked him in the middle of the night, and he was just defending himself when she reached for a pair of scissors.
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The State disputed his explanation and pointed out that there were five stab wounds in her back.
During the evidence of a social worker, Shenay Park, last week, the court heard that he was a good son to his parents, a model school pupil, and was well-liked at work.
Besides modelling, he had worked as a petrol attendant and a set-builder in the film industry.
He and Mfengu had dated for two years, but she broke up with him when he cheated on her.
She rejected his attempts at making amends, but she softened and let him in one night when he arrived in Silversands, Kuils River, where she was house-sitting.
He spent the night and said he was woken up by her throwing things at him, as well as around the room - and that was when he had to defend himself.
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He told the social worker, who assessed him, that he had been possessed at the time, adding that he was still traumatised by what he had done.
Last week, his mother pleaded with the court to be lenient, saying that he had never been in trouble and everybody loved him.
But, for Abrahams, these "dual" versions of a person found guilty of murdering their intimate partner are not unusual.
Abrahams said:
She said these murderers did not lose control over themselves; they lost control over their partners.
Abrahams based these insights on interviews with prisoners who had been convicted of murdering their intimate partners.
On 1 December 2018, Mfengu had some high school friends from Plettenberg Bay over, and she introduced Kasongo to them for the first time.
However, he had an argument with her, in front of her friends, and took her phone away. He then took her to the bedroom and tried to strangle her. Her friends stepped in to help her.
Abrahams said it was clear that her friends tried to protect her from him - and that, by breaking up with him, she had done everything "right" in terms of getting away from him.
Abrahams said:
"The next day, she went to work, and she correctly asked for assistance from her co-workers to ask him to leave [when he arrived to speak to her]," she added.
Mfengu worked at Poetry in Tygervalley, and on that day he would not listen to her when she asked him to leave.
She asked her colleagues for help, and the manager called the security to have him escorted out.
Abrahams said it would have been embarrassing for her - and the feeling of embarrassment might have stopped her from going to the police.
She said the only thing left for Mfengu was to get a protection order.
She said that, when Kasongo stabbed Mfengu to death, he hit her aorta and she bled out. This showed that he meant to kill her.
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"It was overkill," she told Judge Daniel Thulare.
Abrahams said the claim regarding the evil spirit that possessed him, and that she was the attacker and he was defending himself, was in line with research conducted on intimate partner murderers.
In studies undertaken by her department, the majority of the murderers blamed the victim.
"They talk about 'she made me do it'. They don't see their own behaviour."
The sentencing proceedings were postponed to 3 November, for two witnesses from Mfengu's family to testify.
