A South African woman has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering a five-year-old boy, Simphiwe Ntoneko Xaba, telling the Durban High Court that she targeted the child because she blamed his mother for introducing her to gambling, which she said left her drowning in debt.
Sibongile Happiness Ngwadla, 40, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, July 28, to charges of m8rder, kidnapping, and attempted extortion.
In her plea statement read before the court, Ngwadla admitted that she kidnapped Ntobeko on August 22, 2025, and took him to Ezimeleni informal settlement, where her relative, Sinenhlanhla Mbotho, lived.
Using a burner phone, she sent text messages to the child’s mother, Ntombifikile Xaba, claiming the boy had been kidnapped and demanding a R60,000 eWallet payment in exchange for his safe return.
Ngwadla said she wanted the money to settle debts she had accumulated through online gambling.
“I resented the deceased’s mother, who introduced me to gambling, for failing to assist me when I fell on hard times, and I sought to make her pay for it,” she said in her plea.
She admitted that when she realised her extortion plan had failed because police and community members had launched an intensive search for the missing child, she decided to k!ll him.
“The police and the community were actively looking for the missing child, and his picture was being circulated on social media. I decided to k!ll the deceased to avoid detection and arrest.”
On August 23, Ngwadla took Ntobeko from Mbotho’s home to a secluded area in Isipingo, where she first attempted to strangle him.
“He cried so much that I stopped,” she said.
She then took the child to the Q Section of Umlazi, where she threw him into a river to ensure that he drowned.
“I admit that I planned and executed the k!lling of the child to conceal the kidnapping and extortion, and therefore my actions were premeditated,” Ngwadla said.
She further admitted that after the m8rder, she tried to divert suspicion by sending a WhatsApp message to Mbotho, claiming that she had returned Ntobeko to his mother and had later heard that Xaba herself had thrown the child into the river.
The deception failed, and Ngwadla was arrested on August 27.
As her Legal Aid attorney, Zeera Fareed, read her plea statement, Ngwadla became emotional and cried.
After the court convicted her on her guilty plea, she elected to testify in mitigation of sentence.
“I apologise to the family that I have caused harm to. I am remorseful,” she told the court.
Ngwadla said she hoped the sentence imposed would show the victim’s family that she genuinely regretted her actions.
She also expressed a wish to apologise to her five children. Before her arrest, she said, she had been self-employed as a hairdresser in Broad Street, Durban.
Outside court, Ntombifikile Xaba rejected Ngwadla’s claim that she had introduced her to gambling.
She said they had lived close to one another in Umlazi and that Ngwadla would often borrow her cellphone to gamble online. That, she said, was how they had become acquainted.
Xaba added that by the time her son was kidnapped, she and Ngwadla had not been speaking for a long time after Ngwadla broke her kettle and failed to replace it.
In a victim impact statement read before the court, Xaba described the lasting trauma caused by her son’s murder.
“I trust no one. I have become overprotective of my two boys. I no longer allow them to leave my sight. I don’t allow them to go out and play with other children because I fear they will not return,” she said.
The matter was postponed to Thursday for sentencing proceedings.