DURBAN – A chilling tale of greed, gambling, and a cold-blooded betrayal has come to a head in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, where 45-year-old Sibongile Happiness Ngwadla has pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and murder of her neighbour’s five-year-old son, Ntobeko Simphiwe Xaba.
In a plea statement that left the courtroom in stunned silence, Ngwadla detailed how she snatched the young boy from his Umlazi home in August 2025 and eventually drowned him in a river after her plan to extort R60,000 from his mother failed.
The tragedy began when Ngwadla, a self-employed hairdresser, found herself sinking into a deep hole of gambling debt. Desperate for money, she targeted the young Ntobeko, whose mother, Ntombifikile Xaba, was her neighbour and former acquaintance.
Ngwadla admitted that she had initially hoped to use the child as leverage to secure a large payout. However, as the days passed and the pressure from the community and police intensified, she realised her plan was falling apart.
“The police and the community were actively looking for the missing child, and his picture was being circulated on social media,” Ngwadla stated in her plea. “I decided to kill the deceased to avoid detection and arrest.”
The details of the murder are particularly harrowing. On August 23, 2025, Ngwadla took Ntobeko to a secluded area in Isipingo. Her first attempt to end the child’s life was through strangulation, but she stopped when the boy began to cry uncontrollably.
“He cried so much that I stopped,” she admitted.
Undeterred by the child’s pleas, she then took him to the Q Section of Umlazi. There, she threw the five-year-old into a river, ensuring that he drowned. “I admit that I planned and executed the killing of the child to conceal the kidnapping and extortion, and therefore my actions were premeditated,” she told the court.
Following the murder, Ngwadla attempted to divert suspicion by sending a deceptive WhatsApp message to the boy’s mother, claiming she had returned Ntobeko and suggesting that the mother herself might have been involved in his disappearance. The deception was short-lived, and she was arrested on August 27, 2025.
As her Legal Aid attorney, Zeera Fareed, read the statement, Ngwadla became emotional and wept. After being convicted on her guilty plea, she took the stand to testify in mitigation of sentence, offering a tearful apology to the Xaba family.
“I apologise to the family that I have caused harm to. I am remorseful,” she said, adding that she hoped her sentence would demonstrate the depth of her regret. She also expressed a wish to apologise to her own five children.
However, outside the courtroom, the victim’s mother, Ntombifikile Xaba, was far from accepting the apology. She rejected Ngwadla’s claim that she had introduced the killer to gambling, explaining that Ngwadla had simply borrowed her phone to gamble online. Xaba also revealed that the two had not been on speaking terms for a long time after Ngwadla broke her kettle and failed to replace it.
In a heart-wrenching victim impact statement, Xaba described the permanent scars the murder has left on her life.
“I trust no one. I have become overprotective of my two boys. I no longer allow them to leave my sight,” Xaba said. “I don’t allow them to go out and play with other children because I fear they will not return.”
The brutal nature of the crime and the cold calculation behind it have once again sparked a national conversation about the safety of children in South Africa and the devastating impact of gambling addiction.
The case has been postponed to Thursday for sentencing proceedings, where Ngwadla faces a potential life sentence for the premeditated murder of a child who once called her a neighbour.
