THE Durban High Court on Wednesday (October 14) arranged October 28 as the sentencing date for the Pinetown man convicted for the murder of his grandmother.

In July, Thabo Ntokozo Theodore Nzimande was found guilty of murdering his grandmother, Beata Beatrice de Lange’s (80), in Pinetown in 2024.

In the judgment, the court rejected Nzimande’s version that he does not know what happened on the night of the murder in the granny flat he shared with De Lange because he had smoked dagga and overdosed on prescription pills and had passed out.

During trial, Nzimande had told the court that he only came to when the police had arrived at the scene of the crime.

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On September 21, the court heard sentencing arguments from the defence and the State, with the former arguing for a deviation from the prescribed minimum sentence of 15 years, with half of whatever is eventually imposed converted to correctional supervision.

The State had argued for the court to consider handing down a sentence no less than 20 years.

De Lange was murdered in a granny flat she shared with Nzimande, which is located on the Pinetown property of her son-in-law. She was stabbed multiple times and her head decapitated.

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