12yr Old Boy Was made to watch as mother is burnt for 'witchcraft'

Thembekile Ngubane, now 15, told Durban High Court in South Africa how one man held his mother, down while another forced her to drink petrol, before setting her on fire.

He claimed that Thula Dlula and Mzuyanda Mntabo held his mother’s hands and assaulted her, while she was made to drink a liquid in a plastic container.

And once she was killed, a mob surrounded her body and attacked it – because they believed she was a witch.

The court also heard how another mother accused Thembekile Ngubane of shaving her son’s eyebrows and cutting children’s hair in use for magic spells.

Prior to the attack, she had been asked to leave the area, but a local meeting to decide her fate quickly descended into violence.

Members of the community threw stones at her, and she was even attacked with a hammer before being killed.

Testifying at the trial, Dr Kelly Holloway from the Prince Mshiyeni Hospital said that Ngubane would have suffered an agonising death as a result of her injuries.