A 40 year old man from Soshanguve has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his younger brother, Lethabo Baloyi, who was 27 and a member of the South African National Defence Force. The Pretoria North magistrate’s court heard that the brothers shared the same mother and that the killing was driven by a dispute over their mother’s will.
During one of their mother’s deployments outside the country, Dineo Cambrige Baloyi accessed her bedroom and discovered that he was not a beneficiary in her will, while his younger brother stood to inherit. He shared this information with his girlfriend and the two then planned to kill Lethabo.
The court heard that on May 30, 2018, the pair invited Lethabo to a party at their mother’s home. They secretly poisoned his drink and, after he lost consciousness, strangled him to death. His body was placed in his vehicle, which was deliberately crashed along the R80 Mabopane highway in an attempt to stage the incident as a car accident.
After the murder, Baloyi fled to Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga and was later arrested in connection with an unrelated kidnapping case. While hospitalised in September 2024, he confessed to the murder to his uncle, who alerted police. Baloyi later made a formal confession before a magistrate and pleaded guilty, but the court found he showed a complete disregard for human life and posed a danger to society.
About The Author
