Bereaved family members and friends of a Tsholotsho woman who was killed by her stepson last week had a torrid time at the mortuary as the body, which was already in a decomposing state, could not be accommodated into a single coffin.
Consequently, the family of the now deceased Antoneta Moyo had to come out with a rather strange alternative to accommodate the “small” coffin inside the bigger one.
Mysteriously, after fitting the ballooning body into the coffin, the family members still struggled to put a lid despite several attempts to close the makeshift coffin.
Moyo (56) was fatally assaulted by her stepson Smile Ncube with a knobkerrie before removing her right eye, ears and fingers and burning the body.
It is reported that the two had a misunderstanding as Ncube accused his mother of bewitching her.
After the gruesome murder, he reportedly alerted other family members in the Sipepa area that they were going to enjoy life because he had killed the troublesome woman.
However, the family of the deceased was not happy with the way the whole issue was handled and when they got to Tsholotsho they took the corpse for burial in Bulawayo.
“This is really shocking! When we arrived at the funeral parlour to collect the body we found that it was mysteriously ballooning. We had to look for a bigger coffin and put the first one inside, forcibly closed it.
This is really sad and not even a single person from the Ncube family came to attend the burial,” said the family spokesperson Pilate Ndlovu.
The bitter family members also revealed that they were not even given the missing body parts which include the right eye, ears and fingers.
“Maybe this is all happening because the corpses’ body parts are missing. It does not have the right eye, ears and three fingers. We wonder what happened to them,” said another fuming family member.
The Ndlovu family said they are shocked and hurt with the incident because they were only told about Moyo’s death days later.
“We do not really understand how it all happened. There are other family members in the nearby homesteads, but they all failed to restrain Smile when he was beating and burning our sister.
“Their explanation is that they all ran away as he was wild and only returned after he had killed her,” said Ndlovu.
Repeated efforts to get a comment from the Ncubes were fruitless.
Moyo was buried at Bulawayo’s Luveve Cemetery after hours of struggling with fitting the body into the two coffins.
Smile was arrested following the gruesome murder.