NEWS
Tragic Revenge: Woman Confesses to Abducting and Killing Innocent Five-Year-Old
An Umlazi woman has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering five-year-old Simphiwe Ntobeko Xaba in August 2025, telling the Durban High Court that she targeted the child because she blamed his mother for introducing her to gambling, which she said left her drowning in debt.
she sent text messages to the child’s mother, Ntombifikile Xaba, claiming the boy had been kidnapped and demanding a R60,000 eWallet payment in exchange for his safe return.that when she realised her extortion plan had failed because police and community members had launched an intensive search for the missing child, she decided to kill him
As her Legal Aid attorney, Zeera Fareed, read her plea statement, Ngwadla became emotional and cried. After the court convicted her on her guilty plea, she elected to testify in mitigation of sentence. I apologise to the family that I have caused harm to. I am remorseful,” she told the court.
Ngwadla said she hoped the sentence imposed would show the victim’s family that she genuinely regretted her actions.She also expressed a wish to apologise to her five children. Before her arrest, she said, she had been self-employed as a hairdresser in Broad Street, Durban.
Outside court, Ntombifikile Xaba rejected Ngwadla’s claim that she had introduced her to gambling.She said they had lived close to one another in Umlazi and that Ngwadla would often borrow her cellphone to gamble online. That, she said, was how they had become acquainted.
Xaba added that by the time her son was kidnapped, she and Ngwadla had not been speaking for a long time after Ngwadla broke her kettle and failed to replace it. In a victim impact statement read before the court, Xaba described the lasting trauma caused by her son’s murder.
I have become overprotective of my two boys. I no longer allow them to leave my sight. I don’t allow them to go out and play with other children because I fear they will not return
