Victim's mom speaks out

2003-04-30 16:04

Pretoria - Whatever happened to Pretoria bus shooter De Wet Kritzinger, convicted on Wednesday of murder, would make not make her life easier, the mother of one of his victims said.

"Nothing can bring back my daughter," Edith Mathebula told reporters outside the court where Kritzinger was convicted on three charges of murder and four of attempted murder.

Mathebula's daughter Gogo was a passenger on the fateful Mamelodi-bound bus which Kritzinger boarded in Constantia Park on January 12, 2000. He fired a number of shots, killing her and another passenger, Thembekile Constance Phasha, as well as bus driver Mduduzi Graeme Nyembe.

Pretoria High Court Judge Dion Basson found Kritzinger was aware of the wrongfulness of his deeds. This wrongfulness was determined by the criteria of the law, and not by the religious or political convictions of the person committing the crime, he said.

Kritzinger had said he shot the people because of the belief, based on his religion, that his former wife would not be able to remarry without his being dead. He hoped that he would be shot by police reacting to his attack.

Investigating officer Bennie de Beer earlier testified Kritzinger told him he did not regard black people as human beings.

"According to him, the word 'kaffir' was not a term of abuse; he had grown up with it."

Mathebula said she now had to take care of her daughter's three children, aged 14, nine and seven.

"He uses such awful language," she said of Kritzinger. "He calls us kaffirs."

Kritzinger's mother Ryna would not speak to reporters.

Sentence proceedings are to start on Friday.

- SAPA