As we close yet another Women’s Month we are still reeling from another senseless murder of a woman by a man. What makes this one even more shocking is the gruesome manner in which Aluta Pasile, the murder accused, went about things after he murdered her. While he may try to excuse his action of killing her – maybe he would claim he did so in a fit of rage and before he knew it he had injured her enough to kill her – what he did after that tells a totally different story.
This young man slept in the same room until the following morning with the body of the person he claimed he loved, after brutally assaulting her and killing her. Then, instead of coming forward or at least telling his friends, family or authorities what he had done, he came up with a plan to not only try and avoid being linked to the murder, but to dispose of her body in such a way that it might never be found and identified. If assaulting her was bad, what he did thereafter is even more horrible and points to a personality that may never be rehabilitated.
This son of somebody coolly went to the nearest hardware store and bought a saw to cut up her body and dispose of it. What was he thinking when he came up with this evil plan? What was he thinking when he started chopping off her head and stuffing it into a suitcase? What kind of a person plans and ultimately goes through with such a gruesome plan? As if that was not bad enough, he then put some of her body parts into a plastic bag and left them in the street to be picked up by the garbage truck as rubbish. We all watch movies where this kind of thing happens and none of us think it is real. In the movies it is always the quiet guy who lives on the periphery of society who does these things and everyone is shocked when they are discovered.
I am sure everyone feels very bad for the family of Nosicelo Mtebeni, who has lost a child in such a way, but has anyone stopped and thought about the family of the alleged killer, Aluta Pasile? Can you imagine being the parent of a young man who has shown such a penchant for the macabre? In such circumstances what do they do, how do they behave, how do they try to come to terms with such a deed from their son? Do they reach out to the Mtebeni family and say….what, exactly? What could they say or do? Or do they stand by their son and find him the best legal representative they can afford? Or does the family abandon him and leave him to stew in his own mess? As a parent what would you do? As the grieving family, what action from the Pasile family would you find acceptable? I doubt there is any parent who sets about to bring up a monster. When our sons leave the home we have no way of knowing how they behave when they are away from us. Maybe, just maybe, this is a wake-up call for all of us to take a closer look at the behaviour of our children, especially of our sons, around other people and women, in particular.
