Pictures: Clive van Niekerk and the two slain children, Shaun and baby Mia.
He thought it was strange when his ex-wife didn’t open the door after he’d knocked. So motor technician Clive van Niekerk (38) decided to make himself at home on the stoep of the house in Centurion and wait.
His son, Shaun, had called him earlier asking to be fetched. He assumed that Anneke, his ex, and her sister had popped out and would be back soon.
Then he spotted Anneke’s car and house keys on a table outside. He unlocked the door - and in the main bedroom found the bodies of 38-year-old Anneke, Shaun (12) and Mia, her five-month-old baby daughter.
“Actually she did it nicely,” he says. “Or at least, it wasn’t as nasty as it could’ve been.”
Few people thought Anneke, a police inspector based in Pretoria, would be capable of shooting herself and her children.
“I knew she’d been through a difficult time,” says her sister, Juanita Prinsloo. “She was a little depressed but I never thought it was that serious.”
Work and financial pressure, as well as an “interesting” relationship with Mia’s father - about whom the family won’t talk - apparently just became too much for the policewoman on Saturday 17 October.
It was one of the rare weekends Anneke and Juanita, who lives in Faerie Glen in Pretoria East, didn’t spend together. “That Saturday Anneke SMSed me and said I should come over so we can talk but I just wanted to be alone at home,” Juanita says.
Shaun, a Grade 5 learner at Pierre van Reyneveld Primary in Pretoria, lived with Clive in Garsfontein, Pretoria East, and with Anneke over weekends.
Juanita says she understands why her sister killed the children as well, not just herself. “She would never have left her children. I don’t blame her.”
Colleagues describe her in letters as humble and down to earth, a shy woman who tried especially hard to protect women and children against violence, “The highlight of her career was in 1995 when she went to Sudan as part of a peace mission.”
Clive and Juanita are overwhelmed by the support they’re receiving. “And this from people who aren’t judging. Messages are pouring in. It helps a lot,” Juanita says.
She’ll remember her sister as a good mother. “Just the other day they bought paint and made prints of their feet. And even though he was a boy she and Shaun would have cooking and baking sessions.”
