Mpumalanga mom admits stabbing baby to death after giving birth, gets 22 years

A mother confessed that she had killed her baby.

• A woman was found guilty of a crime and sentenced to 22 year imprisonment‘ For murdering her newborn baby, she will be imprisoned.
• After giving birth, the mother confessed to having stabbed her child with a pair scissors.
• She kept the body of her child in a shallow grave and later confessed to it to her mother. 

Mpumalanga’s 26 year-old mother admitted to stabbing her baby using a pair scissors right after giving birth. 

After Phindile Sibya was found guilty on Wednesday of murder, the Mpumalanga High Court sentenced her to 22 years in prison.

According to the National Prosecuting Authority, Sibiya pleaded guilty in an intentional murder of her child and burying her body in a shallow grave.  

Sibiya, in her plea statement, stated that in 2021 she had met a man who visited her Belfast homestead. He proposed to her and they became romantically involved. He also promised that he would marry her in future.

Sibiya met the unnamed male for their second time and they agreed to have unprotected sexual sex.

She discovered she was pregnant. She tried calling her would-be father to let him know, but he wasn’t available.

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After realizing that she was pregnant, her mother also told her she had to deny it.

Monica Nyuswa, NPA spokesperson, said that her mother threatened her to kill her if it was true that she was pregnant.

Sibiya went to a clinic to end her pregnancy, but she was already in the final stages.

She gave birth on January 1, 2022.

“She felt labor pains and went to a toilet twice, where she passed urine. The third time she went to the toilet she brought a pair scissors.

Nyuswa stated that Nyuswa gave birth to a girl while she was on her way to the bathroom. She stabbed her child with scissors until she died.

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Sibiya’s mother noticed bloodstains the next morning and began questioning her. The mother then asked Sibiya if she was a mother and if she had concealed the body of her dead child.

“She went to retrieve the body of the deceased and was then reported to police. She was convicted and sentenced.”

The State presented evidence that the child died from a cold and painful death at hands of the person she was supposed to protect.

Nyuswa stated that Nyuswa received a photo album, a post-mortem and social work reports that confirmed the deceased’s birth alive.