AN 18-year-old Zimbabwean teenager Nyasha Johwa plunged to his death from a sixth-floor flat window after he was allegedly found naked in bed with another man’s wife in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, on Tuesday morning.
South African police are now investigating whether Johwa jumped or was pushed out of the window of a nine-floor building in Claim Street in the notorious Hillbrow neighbourhood.
It is believed Johwa was allegedly let into the flat by his lover.
“It was around 9:30am. I was bathing, and suddenly I heard a woman screaming and thudding noises,” said a visibly shaken Juliet Ndebele, who shared a flat with the woman.
She also heard a man’s voice and recognised it as that of the woman’s husband whom she had seen at the flat on a few occasions.
Ndebele said the couple were parents to a 13-year-old boy.
She heard him shouting “s’febe uyajola! (b***h, you’re cheating on me)”.
“That’s when I dressed and came out quickly. I saw her leaning out the window, screaming ‘he fell! He’s dead!’.”
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Ndebele said the distraught woman then threatened to throw herself out of the window as well.
“I told her not to do it,” she said, “then I looked out the window to see what she was talking about and I saw him (Johwa) lying there naked.”
Ndebele said she had not seen the boy in the flat prior to the tragedy and only saw him when he was lying face-up on the landing on the ground.
Getrude Sibanda, who owns the flat, said the woman had been living there since the beginning of the month.
“She said she just needed to stay here for a month to get her affairs in order and would move out at the end of November.”
“His (Johwa’s) brother was here to fetch the boy’s clothes, but could only find his denim shorts and sneakers.”
The teenager’s brother, John (24), said his brother had stopped going to school last year and was working at a club in Sunninghill. He was not sure what he did there.
“I have managed to contact our family in Zimbabwe to tell them, but I don’t know how they’re feeling. I just have no strength,” he said.
The police have arrested the woman’s husband. He is facing charges of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. It is believed that he beat up his wife.
“We have opened an inquest docket because we don’t know if it’s murder or whether he jumped,” said police spokeswoman constable Carol Mulamu.
Johwa’s tragic death has left his family in Mzilikazi’s K Square, Bulawayo, in deep shock.
His brother Kelvin Guruwe told Southern Eye that he could not say much except that they were shocked and working on how to repatriate his remains for burial.
“I can’t say much,” said Guruwe. “All that we know is that my younger brother died on Tuesday morning in South Africa and as a family we are working on how his body will be ferried back into the country for burial,” he said. — IOL/Own Correspondent
