Marie's sons were nabbed for the death of Dr Louis Heyns. She wants to support them - but she has only R10 to her name.
|||Malmesbury - “I thought I’d have a peaceful retirement. I could never dream this would happen to me.”
Marie Botha, 70, the mother of two of the men arrested in connection with the murder of Stellenbosch academic Dr Louis Heyns, says this as she rubs her arms for warmth in a cramped, bare brick room she shares with three children in Malmesbury.
Botha used to be a wealthy woman who ran her own hair salon and provided “everything and more” for her two sons and two daughters.
But her life has been reduced to a far cry from that - all she has left is some clothing and a wilted R10 in her pocket, and she is sharing a room in a friend’s home.
Botha’s sons, aged 33 and 43, and a third person are to appear in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
They are suspected of killing Heyns, who disappeared a week before his body was found in a shallow grave in Strand on Thursday.
Police traced the Peugeot that Heyns had been driving to Malmesbury, where they arrested the three suspects.
Speaking in the cramped room, which had just enough space for the double bunk in it, Botha said she wanted to be at the court on Monday, but did not have a lift. She has few possessions other than clothing and toiletries.
To get to and from the room she has to climb a steep, muddy embankment and use a wire washing line to balance herself.
Botha initially lived in Upington with her husband, two sons and two daughters.
Her husband’s work then took the family to Nigel, where they lived for years.
“We had a lot of money. My husband’s brother is a multimillionaire. In Nigel I had my own things, my own furniture - and look now,” Botha said.
About a decade ago, when her husband fell ill with emphysema, her family moved to Gordon’s Bay.
Her husband died a while after the move.
Botha’s home situation began to deteriorate as the abuse of drugs, especially tik, became a problem in her family.
The drug abuse led to theft.
“I’d wake up and the TV would be gone. Once I woke up and my car was gone,” Botha said.
“I had two hair salons, one in Upington and another in Durbanville. I made a lot of money... It was all stolen from me.”
Botha and her sons, one of whom she said was often in prison for theft, moved to Malmesbury, where they initially stayed in a shelter.
Friends later took them in.
One of her daughters remained in Nigel. Botha said this daughter wanted nothing more to do with the family.
Botha’s other daughter was ill and lived in Strand.
“I’m in a terrible situation... I’m sitting with R10 in my pocket,” Botha said.
“I used to have so much. I’ve always been a good mother. My children always had everything they needed and more.
“If I had known this would happen, I would never have come here.”
Early on Thursday police officers arrived to arrest her sons.
Botha, still half-asleep, did not know what was going on and only realised why they had been arrested when she read newspapers the next day.
She felt “very sorry” for Heyns’s family.
Hendrika Hendricks, 39, seven months pregnant with the child of one of Botha’s sons, said on Sunday she was shocked by the arrests.
She lives in a shelter.
Hendricks said that she would not focus on the court proceedings.
“I’m just going to focus on myself, my health and that of my child.”
Cape Times